US, not North Korea, Begging for War

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

The threat is ominously real, war America's option of choice in multiple theaters, diplomacy a foreign language.

Is North Korea next? Will Washington risk a possible nuclear confrontation on the Korean peninsula?

How will Russia and China react if America attacks the DPRK? Will they intervene to protect their security or stay uninvolved?

The stakes couldn't be higher. Millions of lives are threatened if war erupts. 

Hostile rhetoric, reckless threats, counterproductive sanctions, installation of four more THAAD missile systems in South Korea infuriating Russia and China, provocative US/South Korean/Japanese military exercises, along with vilification of Kim Jong-un and his government are eerily reminiscent of the run-up to ongoing US wars and earlier ones.

Is another planned? So far, hostility toward the DPRK has been political, economic and rhetorical. Propaganda wars precede hot ones. The pattern is familiar.

The difference this time is a heavily armed nuclear power able to hit back hard. America likes soft targets, ones it can roll over easily, not always working out this way - notably in Southeast Asia, Afghanistan and Syria.

In a neocon/CIA-connected Washington Post op-ed, former Langley acting director and deputy director Michael Morell hyped a nonexistent DPRK threat, saying:

"I believe that North Korea may have the capability today to successfully conduct a nuclear attack on the United States…Just because North Korea has not yet demonstrated a capability does not mean it does not have it."

No evidence suggests it. Nothing indicates a DPRK desire or intent to wage war on America. Just the opposite! Its government seeks normalized relations Washington rejects.

Morell: Pyongyang "demonstrated, with two intercontinental ballistic missile tests this summer, that it has missiles capable of ranging as far east as Chicago."

Noted ballistic missile/rocket experts Theodore Postol, Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker disagree, saying their analysis shows Pyongyang's ballistic missile capability is "sub-level ICBM that will not be able to deliver nuclear warheads to the continental United States" or even Alaska.

The experts called the DPRK's July ballistic missile tests "a carefully choreographed deception…to create a false impression that the Hwasong-14 is a near-ICBM that poses a nuclear threat to the continental US."

In October 2016, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper claimed the same baseless threat as Morell, saying (w)e ascribe to (North Korea) the capability to launch a missile that has a weapon on it that could reach parts of the United States, certainly including Alaska and Hawaii."

Claims without evidence are baseless. Regardless of its nuclear and ballistic missile capability, North Korea wants peace, not war.

It'll only strike back militarily if attacked. It won't wage war preemptively. The reason is obvious.

It would be suicide, its nation destroyed in response, millions of its people slaughtered, a conflict likely much worse than the 1950s one - this time perhaps with nuclear weapons.

So far, Washington has relied on toughness short of belligerence. An escalated war of words risks things turning hot by accident or design.

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My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

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