******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
(Alternet/Graystone, usually a vehicle for Blumenthal and Norton's Assadist propaganda, finally publishes a useful article.)
It’s difficult to overstate how reactionary Obama’s policies became. In contrast to Bush, and even Trump, Obama flatly rejected the idea of negotiating with the North without a prior commitment to denuclearization. He also expressed no interest in the DPRK’s offer to sign a peace agreement. More disturbingly, he was the first president in history to refer to the Korean War, which has been universally recognized as a bloody stalemate, as a “victory.” In doing so, Obama revived a right-wing trope that was first used in the 1950s and resurrected during the Bush years by David Frum and other neocons. So from the onset, Obama caused America’s policy toward Korea to take a sharp right turn.
The tensions were exacerbated by the covert cyber war Obama launched against North Korea to damage and slow its missile program. During the Obama years, North Korea tested three more nuclear bombs, and despite the cyber war, rapidly expanded its missile abilities. As the situation deteriorated, Obama embarked on a series of military exercises with South Korea that increased in size and tempo over the course of his administration. They included unprecedented overflights by B-52 and stealth B1-B bombers as well as training in “decapitation strikes” designed to take out Kim and his leadership. All of this led straight to the crisis Trump inherited and has only made worse.
But while Trump critics rightly chafe over his reckless allusions to a nuclear attack on Korea, it’s often forgotten that Obama himself made similar statements, couched in his trademark cool. “We could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals,” Obama told CBS News in April 2016. A few months later, Daniel Russel, the president’s senior diplomat on Asia who had earlier viewed The Interview at Sony’s request, actually threatened North Korea's destruction. If Kim gets “an enhanced capacity to conduct a nuclear attack,” Russel told defense reporters, he would “immediately die.”
full: http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/how-sony-obama-seth-rogen-and-cia-secretly-planned-force-regime-change-north-korea
_________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
