Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Solomon: Words and War, Margolis: OK Mr. Gates. What Now?

From: zhelp@zcommunications.org

Words and War

By Norman Solomon
Norman Solomon's ZSpace: June 8, 2009

It takes at least tacit faith in massive violence to believe that after
three decades of horrendous violence in Afghanistan, upping the violence
there will improve the situation.

Despite the pronouncements from high Washington places that the problems of
Afghanistan can't be solved by military means, 90 percent of the spending
for Afghanistan in the Obama administration's current supplemental bill is
military.

Often it seems that lofty words about war hopes are boilerplate efforts to
make us feel better about an endless warfare state. Oratory and punditry
laud the Pentagon's fallen as noble victims of war, while enveloping its
other victims in a haze of ambiguity or virtual nonexistence.

When last Sunday's edition of the Washington Post printed the routine
headline "Iraq War Deaths," the newspaper meant American deaths -- to
Washington's ultra-savvy, the deaths that really count. The only numbers and
names under the headline were American.

Ask for whom the bell tolls. That's the implicit message -- from top
journalists and politicians alike.

A few weeks ago, some prominent U.S. news stories did emerge about Pentagon
air strikes that killed perhaps a hundred Afghan civilians. But much of the
emphasis was that such deaths could undermine the U.S. war effort. The most
powerful media lenses do not correct the myopia when Uncle Sam's vision is
impaired by solipsism and narcissism.

Words focus our attention. The official words and the media words --
routinely, more or less the same words -- are ostensibly about war, but they
convey little about actual war at the same time that they boost it. Words
are one thing, and war is another.

Yet words have potential to impede the wheels of war machinery. "And
henceforth," Albert Camus wrote, "the only honorable course will be to stake
everything on a formidable gamble: that words are more powerful than
munitions."

A very different type of gamble is routinely underway at the centers of
political power, where words are propaganda munitions. In Washington, the
default preference is to gamble with the lives of other people, far away.

More than 40 years ago, Country Joe McDonald wrote a song ("An Untitled
Protest") about war fighters: who "pound their feet into the sand of shores
they've never seen / Delegates from the western land to join the death
machine." Now, tens of thousands more of such delegates are on the way to
Afghanistan.

In pseudo-savvy Washington, "appearance is reality." Killing and maiming,
fueled by appropriations and silence, are rendered as abstractions.

The deaths of people unaligned with the Pentagon are the most abstract of
all. No wonder the Washington Post is still printing headlines like "Iraq
War Deaths." Why should Iraqis qualify for inclusion in Iraq war deaths?

There's plenty more media invisibility and erasure ahead for Afghan people
as the Pentagon ramps up its war effort in their country.

War thrives on abstractions that pass for reality.

There are facts about war in news media and in presidential speeches. For
that matter, there are plenty of facts in the local phone book. How much do
they tell you about the most important human realities?

Millions of words and factual data pour out of the Pentagon every day. Human
truth is another matter.

My father, Morris Solomon, recently had his ninetieth birthday. He would be
the first to tell you that his brain has lost a lot of capacity. He doesn't
recall nearly as many facts as he used to. But a couple of days ago, he told
me: "I know what war is. It's stupid. It's ruining humanity."

That¹s not appearance. It's reality.

Norman Solomon's books include "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits
Keep Spinning Us to Death," which has been adapted into a documentary film.
For more information, go to: www.normansolomon.com

From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
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http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22759.htm

OK Mr. Gates. What Now?

By Eric Margolis

June 03, 2009 "Lew Rockwell" -- PARIS - One of the first things you
learn in diplomacy 101 is not to make threats you can't back up.

But that is just what US Defense Secretary Robert Gates did last week
by thundering the US "would not accept," and "would not stand idly by" while
North Korea continued to develop nuclear weapons.

North Korea's nuclear weapons threaten the entire globe, warned Gates,
whose own Pentagon has some 10,000 nuclear warheads deployed at home and
abroad, 28,500 troops permanently based in South Korea, and large
contingents in Japan, Okinawa and Guam.

Not to be out-threatened, North Korea warned back that if attacked, it
would turn South Korea's capitol, Seoul, into "a sea of fire" and bombard
Japan.

Dire threats and angry hot air always characterize poisonous relations
between isolated, Stalinist North Korea and the US, Japan and South Korea.
Their recriminations have become a form of ritualized kabuki theater in
which snarls and grimaces replace actual violence.

After much angry posturing, the US, Japan and South Korea usually pay
off North Korea's "Dear Leader," Kim Jong-il, to stop making trouble.

But this time, both Washington and Pyongyang have gone over the top.
One wonders how Secretary Gates intends to prevent North Korea from having
the nuclear devices it already possesses.

The Pentagon has run out of troops and borrowed money, and is
reluctant to tangle with North Korea's tough, 1.1-million man army. Ever
since Vietnam, the US has preferred to use its military only against small
nations with limited defense capability, like Grenada, Panama, Somalia,
Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq.

There is no way the US will fight a land war against North Korea. A US
bombing and missile campaign against North Korea would be unlikely to
cripple its nuclear program. But such an attack would certainly trigger a
major war.

After North Korea's second small nuclear test last week, there is real
danger this usually harmless kabuki could turn lethal. US and South Korean
forces are on high alert and North Korea says it has torn up the cease-fire
that supposedly ended the Korean War. US war planes and naval units are
buzzing around North Korea like angry hornets.

North Korea's few nukes are not a world danger - at least not yet. The
North has 800 inaccurate medium-ranged missiles aimed at South Korea and
Japan, but they only have conventional high explosive warheads. North Korea
is not believed to have yet mastered miniaturizing or hardening nuclear
warheads for delivery by missile. There are suggestions it may be working on
a long-ranged missile.

Pyongyang's bloodcurdling threats notwithstanding, its infant nuclear
force is primarily defensive. North Koreans have had to literally eat grass
to pay for their nukes.

When eventually deployed, Kim's nuclear-armed missiles are designed to
deter potential US nuclear strikes on North Korea by threatening
counter-strikes on South Korea, Japan and US bases on Okinawa and Guam.
North Korea would be unlikely to initiate a nuclear war with a major nuclear
power that would result in its immediate obliteration by US nuclear
retaliation and vaporization of the Kim dynasty.

But after this week's nuclear test, a new danger has emerged. The US
has renewed threats to stop and search North Korean freighters on the high
seas that might be carrying "weapons of mass destruction," missiles or
military components to the Mideast. South Korea and Japan will do the same,
but only in their coastal waters. North Korea warns, quite correctly, that
such a high seas arrest would be an act of war.

The plot thickens. Israel worries that North Korea, desperate for hard
cash, will sell more missiles, technology and spare parts to the Arabs or
Iran, and in the future, nuclear warheads. Washington frets North Korea may
sell a nuclear device to anti-American extremists.

Israel has put intense pressure on the Obama administration to stop
any flow of North Korean weapons to the Mideast. The White House responded
by threats of a maritime blockade of North Korea.

North Korea says it will retaliate militarily for any high seas
seizures, either in its disputed coastal waters against South Korean naval
forces, or by attacking US ships and spy aircraft that routinely shadow
North Korea's coast and occasionally overfly North Korea.

If this happens, the US would likely respond by missile strikes and
air attacks. North Korea would then riposte with barrages of heavy artillery
and long-range rocket batteries along the DMZ against South Korea's capitol,
a mere 25 miles distant. Attacks on US bases in South Korea by North Korea's
large numbers of Scud missiles could follow.

The Obama administration is playing with fire by threatening an act of
war against North Korea which has so many American troops in its gun sights.

If Kim Jong-il refuses to back down, Washington will be left with the
nasty choice of either taking some sort of military action that is certain
to prove indecisive, or lose face with its allies and foes, and listen to
Kim crow. That's the awkward position Secretary Gates has put himself in.
What happens when the Dear Leader calls his bluff?

Kim Jong-il is happy to play chicken with Washington because this
dangerous game boosts his stature at home and makes him a hero to some
Koreans, both North and South, who see Kim as the authentic Korean leader
for defying the mighty US and refusing to give in to its threats - a sort of
Korean Saddam Hussein. North Korea has long accused South Korea of being an
American colony under US military occupation, and North Korea as the only
"free, independent Korea."

Like his late father, Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il has repeatedly vowed to
reunite the Korean Peninsula before he dies. Time is running out for the
ailing Kim. His pledge should not be taken lightly. This latest crisis must
thus be seen as a function of the inner-Korean struggle for unity - under
the Kim dynasty, of course.

The Dear Leader faces internal challenges over plans to name one of
his three sons North Korea's next dynastic leader. The latest nuclear test
and America's threats will help Kim. Another of his foes, South Korea's
conservative, pro-American president, Lee Myung-bak, is now under siege by
his own people after the tragic suicide of former president, Roh Moo-hyun,
who favored reconciliation with North Korea.

If the North Asian nuclear crisis intensifies, Japan and South Korea
may be forced to deploy nuclear weapons which both can do quickly. Japan can
produce a nuclear weapon in less than 90 days.

Kim Jong-il has picked his time well. Iraq is heating up again. At
least fifty thousand US troops are slated to remain there at least until
2011. The war in Afghanistan and now Pakistan - or Afpak - is going very
badly for the US, which is rushing more troops there. Washington has
provoked a volcanic upheaval in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province. The
US is bankrupt and living on borrowed money. What better time to show who is
really boss on the Korean Peninsula.

The Obama administration should proceed with caution. This latest
crisis with North Korea is clear proof that America's world power has
already reached its limits.

Eric Margolis, contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media
Canada. He is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new book,
American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the
West and the Muslim World. See his website.

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