This week, the boogeyman is North Korea. Is anyone surprised? The Stalinist “Hermit Kingdom” is right out of central casting. Isolated, always bellicose, unpredictable, and on a war footing for decades: If the Korean War was an American citizen, it would be deciding about now whether to take Social Security early or keep brandishing its atomic weapons for a few more years.
But that narrative is shaped by nearly unavoidable bias. It’s easy to bash North Korea, but if I address my own knowledge of the country honestly, I must admit that most of what I think I know about it is really just what other governments choose to tell me. And those other governments routinely lie — to everyone, about everything, day in and day out, as a matter of policy so ingrained in their character that it can only be accurately characterized as pathological.
So, I can’t really know whether Kim Jong Un is a nuke-waving megalomaniac or a milquetoast reformist whose every public utterance is filtered by other states’ censors to make him LOOK like a nuke-waving megalomaniac, pursuant to those other states’ agendas.
Nor can I know whether his generals are egging him on to confrontation, or working frantically to cool things down. Or whether his armies are the brainwashed oriental hordes of US propaganda or just a starving gaggle of scarecrows who’ll throw down their weapons and throw up their hands the first time they see what a US “smart bomb” does to their positions along the DMZ.
If this particular war breaks out — or to be more exact, breaks out again — we’ll be deluged with detailed accounts of how “they” fired first and how the “free world” merely responded in kind. And once again, we’ll have no way of knowing whether those accounts are true stories or heaping piles of bovine scat. The most we’ll really be able to know (and then only if we’re willing to look closely and carefully) is that even if Kim is as bad as we’re told he is, his adversaries aren’t much better on their best days.
And of course we can know — when we take the time to think about it, we DO know — that war is evil, that as Sherman put it, it is “all hell,” and that it always, every time, serves the interests of the politicians and their crony corporate profiteers at the expense of the victims on all sides who pay the butcher’s bill in blood, treasure or both.
The state did not invent war (in fact it may have been the other way around), but the state has normalized war. It has perpetuated, and continually worked to perfect, wholesale murder for four centuries now. Not just Kim’s state, but all of them. Even if anarchy resulted only in Hobbes’s imperfect, retail “war of all against all” — a doubtful proposition, in my opinion — that would be a dramatic improvement.
Citations to this article:
- Thomas L. Knapp, I’m already against the next war, and you should be, too, The Daily Star [Bangladesh], 04/08/13
- Thomas L. Knapp, I’m Already Against the Next War and You Should Be Too, Batesville, Arkansas Daily Guard, 04/09/13
- Thomas L. Knapp, I’m Already Against the Next War and You Should Be Too, Bell Gardens, California Sun, 04/11/13
- Thomas L. Knapp, I’m already against the next war, and you should be, too, University of West Virginia Daily Athenaeum, 04/12/13
- Thomas L. Knapp, I’m Already Against the Next War and You Should Be Too, St. Joseph, Missouri Telegraph, 04/11/13
- Thomas L. Knapp, I’m Already Against the Next War and You Should Be Too, Counterpunch, 04/05/13
Governments lie? Oh, c'mon, Tom! Didn't you hear what President Barack Obama said: "The government is us."
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You know, what really pisses me off is that North Korea has the backing of Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin and Matt Damon. Oh wait, that was Team America. I think they really just have Dennis Rodman now.
"The most we’ll really be able to know (and then only if we’re willing to look closely and carefully) is that even if Kim is as bad as we’re told he is, his adversaries aren’t much better on their best days."
Oh come off it. When Barack Obama starts throwing people into gulags for criticising him I'll take this sort of comment seriously. One doesn't have to be a fan of the current system to realise that liberal democracy is significantly preferable to a Stalinish dictatorship that uses Orwell's 1984 as its handbook. Try setting up a website like C4SS in North Korea and then see just how much better Kim's adversaries are.
"One doesn't have to be a fan of the current system to realise that liberal democracy is significantly preferable to a Stalinish dictatorship"
Significantly preferable to whom? To the people within either of those systems, perhaps. To the people outside those systems who are victimized by those systems, perhaps not.
The "liberal democratic" United States has almost certainly murdered more human beings since 1953 than the "Stalinist" DPRK. The only difference is that more of the DPRK's murders have been "internal," while more of the US's have been "abroad."
"The "liberal democratic" United States has almost certainly murdered more human beings since 1953 than the "Stalinist" DPRK. The only difference is that more of the DPRK's murders have been "internal," while more of the US's have been "abroad.""
Quite possibly true, although the USA didn't go around the world murdering people for daring to criticise whoever was President at the time. That will be small consolation to the victims but I happen to think that what makes the DPRK so much more reprehensible is its deliberate targeting of people simply for airing criticisms or other trivial "offences" against the dear leader.
Yeah Tom, we don't have death squads roaming the streets looking for dissident bloggers yet. So until that day, you need to turn that frown upside down buddy. And we'll start worrying about those death squads the minute they bash down our doors. Not one second sooner. No reason to worry until then, no sirree. Wave that flag ; )
Where did I suggest supporting the current American regime? I was merely pointing out that it's silly to compare it to North Korea. It's the sort of rhetoric that makes anarchists look odd. Dealing in distortions and hyperbole should be left to the mainstream media.
But the thing is, comparing the US to North Korea WITH RESPECT TO FOREIGN POLICY isn't silly at all.
How many countries has North Korea invaded since 1953?
How many countries has the US invaded since 1953?
How many non-North-Koreans has North Korea murdered since 1953?
How many non-Americans has the US murdered since 1953?
How truthful are North Korea's political bosses about their foreign policy agendas?
How truthful are US political bosses about their foreign policy agendas?
It's one thing to say "I would rather live in America than in North Korea."
It's quite another thing to say "I am safer being in a country that is at odds with the US than in a country that is at odds with North Korea," or "the US is more trustworthy with respect to its conduct abroad than North Korea is." To say either one of those things would be, as you put it, silly.
Richard, just ask Americans Andrew Breitbart[1], Arron Swartz[2], Anwar Awlaki[3], JFK and many others about criticising the POTUS, NDAA, SOPA get you name added to the president's kill list [4]. Then keep a look out for a drone or a visit from the spooks and you end up with fast cancer, or 'suicided'.
[1] http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/people-who-think-p…
[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/farewell-aa…
[3] http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/01/world/la-…
[4] http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/the_p…
"If this particular war breaks out — or to be more exact, breaks out again — we’ll be deluged with detailed accounts of how “they” fired first and how the “free world” merely responded in kind. And once again, we’ll have no way of knowing whether those accounts are true stories or heaping piles of bovine scat."
Nobody mentions the Daegu uprising against the USAMGIK-staged "election" & the Jeju Uprising, in which South Korean government-thugs under Yi Seungman massacre Jeju islanders. Predictably, Northern Korean Communists quickly used this, & many other incidents of Yi's political repression, as a perfect pretext to attack South Korea, starting a bloody war 3-year-war claiming the lives of millions, all for imperialist agendas to serve psychopathic politicians & their cronies' interests. US imperialists never learnt. As psychopaths themselves they kept provoking other potential psychopaths to start wars