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.
Reprinted from the June 10, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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