------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 10, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
OLD CAST OF CHARACTERS: RIGHT-WING FOCUSES ON BASHING NORTH KOREA
By Deirdre Griswold
Some of the same right-wingers who not long ago were calling for the "liberation" of Iraq are now focusing on "regime change" in North Korea.
They range from the Christian right and conservative think tanks to a former Watergate criminal, a former CIA director, and a Kansas Republican senator who wants to spend millions of tax dollars on destabilizing the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
They are organizing meetings in Washington, Los Angeles and Seoul, putting ads in newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and lobbying Congress for passage of the "North Korean Freedom Act."
The first version of the act, introduced in 2003, was written by Michael Horowitz of the far-right Hudson Institute. Horowitz wrings his hands over the threat to civilization posed by the DPRK's nuclear program. He seems to have forgotten that the founder of the institute where he works, Herman Kahn, was the author of "On Thermonuclear War," the bible of those who advocated that the U.S. could win a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Kahn was the inspiration for the loony Dr. Strangelove character in Stanley Kubrick's film.
Since 1945, the Pentagon has produced 70,000 nuclear warheads. U.S. intelligence says that the DPRK may have "possibly two" bombs.
Horowitz was an official in the Reagan administration and is a National Advisory Board member of the Institute for Democracy in Vietnam. His Hudson Institute also pushed for the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.
Maybe because that one turned out to be such a disaster, the name of the bill on Korea was changed this year to the "North Korea Human Rights Act." It was introduced by Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, who is utilizing the troops of the Christian right to defame the DPRK as preparation for a mass conversion of that country to capitalism by way of the Good Book--reinforced by cruel economic sanctions and some 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea.
COLSON'S CONNECTION WITH 'EVIL'
Another character who suddenly found Korea along with religion is Charles "Chuck" Colson, Richard Nixon's chief counsel from 1969 to 1973, who was jailed for his part in the Watergate cabal. Colson writes a column now for BreakPoint Online. The headline on one of his recent musings was "Confronting Evil: North Korea Freedom Day."
The column exhorted his readers to participate in lobbying on April 28 for the new bill so they could connect "a biblical understanding of humanity with practical and political efforts to confront intolerable evil." George W. Bush certainly knew who to whip up with his "Axis of Evil" speech.
All this from folks who will tell you that one of the problems with North Korea is that its leaders use "strident language."
Speaking at the Capitol Hill rally on April 28, in addition to Brownback, was Richard Land, a Southern Baptist "religious liberty specialist."
Land called for "a complete cessation of all aid to North Korea by the United States until the fair distribution of that aid can be monitored and assured. I for one am not interested in trading the lives of millions of North Koreans for a worthless commitment by Kim Jong Il to dismantle his nuclear weapons. We should not allow this gangster dictator to hold his nuclear missiles over our heads in order to extort our continued support for his poisonous regime."
It will be news to a few billion people around the globe that the U.S. has been "supporting" the DPRK government.
Some of the ideas for "liberating" North Korea that are now codified in Brownback's bill first appeared on Jan. 18, 2003, in a Wall Street Journal ad entitled "Statement of Principles for U.S.-North Korean Relations." It was signed by Horowitz, Colson and a cast of other notables on the right, including former CIA Director R. James Woolsey and Heritage Foundation Fellow William J. Bennett. Bennett promoted the notoriously racist book, "The Bell Curve," and, as Secretary of Education in the Reagan administration, initiated the school voucher system that is undermining public education.
This propaganda offensive from the right of course cloaks itself in promises of "human rights" and "freedom" for the people of the DPRK.
Under the new bill, far-right groups would be able to tap into the public treasury, getting some of the millions of dollars that would be devoted to radio and print propaganda promoting their brand of "democracy" to the Koreans. The bill calls for around-the-clock radio programming aimed at North Korea. Wonder who'd get the jobs setting that up?
Religious right groups could also get government money to set up "refugee camps" to entice Koreans to leave their homeland, which the demand for a "complete cessation of all aid" and promises of U.S. citizenship would presumably provoke.
DPRK WANTS PEACE TREATY
The government of the DPRK has for some time been in negotiations with the U.S. over its nuclear program. It would agree to a freeze in the program, but only if Washington agrees to compensate it for the loss of potential energy by supplying fuel and other needs.
What the bashers of North Korea never mention is that in 1994 the U.S. government signed an agreement with the DPRK, called the Agreed Framework, that would provide funding and technical assistance for Korea to build light-water reactors instead of the graphite reactors it had under construction. LWRs do not produce plutonium as a byproduct and therefore have no possible military application.
While the reactors were being built, Washington was to supply a good part of the DPRK's energy needs.
The problem is, nothing happened. The promised reactors were never built. Oil deliveries came late, after the coldest weather had passed. The North Korean people went through a series of severe winters with very little heat and light. Their agriculture was affected, too, and life was extremely harsh.
The DPRK sees a freeze in its nuclear program as just the first step toward making all of Korea a nuclear-free zone. The ball is definitely in the U.S. court. Washington has refused for over 50 years to sign a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War. Now the warhawks are trying to further evade their responsibility for the tensions over Korea by unleashing their ideological attack dogs.
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