lo yeeOn
2017-08-13 19:14:20 UTC
Don't say they are behaving badly. Ask: "How the U.S. government has
been behaving?" Professor Bruce Cumings may help with his article
below.
"Americans once carpet-bombed North Korea. It's time to remember that
past" By Bruce Cumings
In May 2007, Cumings was the first recipient of the Kim Dae Jung
Academic Award for Outstanding Achievements and Scholarly
Contributions to Democracy, Human Rights and Peace granted by
South Korea. The award is named in honor of 2000 Nobel Peace Prize
winner and former President of South Korea Kim Dae Jung. The award
recognizes Cumings for his "outstanding scholarship, and engaged
public activity regarding human rights and democratization during
the decades of dictatorship in Korea, and after the dictatorship
ended in 1987."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/13/america-carpet-bombed-north-korea-remember-that-past
The US Air Force subjected North Koreans to three years of `rain and
ruin'. It was a living nightmare - one that still haunts the country
to this day
As they always do on the anniversary of the armistice, North Koreans
celebrated their "victory" in the Korean War on July 27. A few days
later President Donald J Trump remarked that if the North Koreans make
any more threats, they "will be met with fire and fury and frankly
power, the likes of which the world has never seen".
No American president has uttered words like this since Harry Truman
warned the Japanese, between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, either to
surrender or face "a rain of ruin from the air, the likes of which has
never been seen on this earth". Trump's nuclear bluster, made
off-the-cuff between golf rounds, was widely condemned, but a few days
later he doubled down on it.
As a White House staffer told the New York Times, the president
"believes he has a better feel for Mr Kim [Jong Un] than his advisors
do. He thinks of Mr Kim as someone pushing people around, and Mr
Trump thinks he needs to show that he cannot be pushed."
. . .
We are not just a superpower, Gorka went on, "we are now a
hyper-power. Nobody in the world, especially not North Korea, comes
close to challenging our military capabilities." This has been a
truism since the Soviet Union collapsed, but it doesn't explain how
the US has failed to win four of the five major wars it has fought
since 1945. One of those wars was Korea, where rough peasant armies,
North Korean and Chinese, fought the US to a standstill.
It was 64 years ago that North Koreans emerged from this war into a
living nightmare, after three years of "rain and ruin" by the US Air
Force. Pyongyang had been razed to the ground, with the Air Force
stating in official documents that the North's cities suffered greater
damage than German and Japanese cities firebombed during World War II.
Just as Japan scholar Richard Minear termed Truman's atomic attacks
"exterminationist", the great French writer and filmmaker Chris Marker
wrote after a visit to the North in 1957, "Extermination crossed this
land". It was an indelible experience still drilled into the heads of
every North Korean.
On my first visit to Pyongyang in 1981, a guide quickly brought up the
bombing and said it had killed several of his family members. Wall
posters depicted a wizened old woman in the midst of the bombing,
declaring "American imperialists - wolves".
The day after Trump's bluster, the DPRK government stated: "The US
once waged a tragic war that plunged this land into a sea of blood and
fire, and has been leaving no stone unturned to obliterate the DPRK's
ideology and system century after century."
There are 25 million human beings living in North Korea. They bleed
like we do, they live and die like we do, they love their kin like we
do. Trump's callous and cavalier threat was perhaps the most
irresponsible thing he has said since becoming president (which is
really saying something), but most Americans will not know this
because they know nothing about the carpet-bombing of North Korea.
What about the 50 million South Koreans, whose elders also suffered
through this war? "Trump doesn't seem to understand what an alliance
is, and doesn't seem to consider his ally when he says those things,"
Lee Byong-chul, a senior fellow at an institute in Seoul told the New
York Times."
"No American president has mentioned a military option so easily, so
offhandedly as he has." But here Trump has a precedent: Bill Clinton
also didn't bother to consult South Korean president Kim Young Sam
when drawing up plans for a preemptive strike in June 1994."
The next few weeks are critical to this deepening crisis, with annual
"Ulchi-Freedom Guardian" war games set to start up on August 21,
involving tens of thousands of American and South Korean troops.
North Korean generals have been preparing for moments like this for
decades, gaming out war scenarios during several crises going back to
January 1968 when they seized the US spy ship Pueblo and held the crew
for 11 months.
Thus the North's statements in the current crisis (unlike Trump's)
have a concrete, predictable nature: lots of bluster and bombast
combined with quite specific plans, namely four medium-range missiles
to be launched into waters near Guam on August 15th, if Kim Jong Un
gives the go ahead.
Pyongyang always pursues tit-for-tat strategies: the US lifts B1-B
nuclear-capable bombers from Guam for flyovers of South Korea - a
constant not just under Trump but also during Obama's tenure - and the
North chooses a scenario that will call attention to the nuclear
blackmail that the US has pursued going back to the Korean War, and
particularly during the decades from 1958 to 1990, when the US
stationed hundreds of nukes in South Korea with standard plans to use
them in the early stages of a North Korean invasion. Pyongyang also
likes to choose dates that have historical resonance: August 15 is the
anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japanese colonialism in 1945.
Upon the news of his wife's death, Shakespeare's Macbeth said, "Out,
out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that
struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It
is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury." He famously
added, "Signifying nothing". Trump signified this: yet another
American venture in extermination.
Bruce Cumings teaches at the University of Chicago and is the author
of The Korean War: A History
From Wikipedia:
Bruce Cumings (born September 5, 1943) is an American historian of
East Asia, professor, lecturer and author. He is the Gustavus F. and
Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History, and former
chair of the history department at the University of Chicago. He
specializes in modern Korean history and contemporary international
relations.
In May 2007, Cumings was the first recipient of the Kim Dae Jung
Academic Award for Outstanding Achievements and Scholarly
Contributions to Democracy, Human Rights and Peace granted by
South Korea. The award is named in honor of 2000 Nobel Peace Prize
winner and former President of South Korea Kim Dae Jung. The award
recognizes Cumings for his "outstanding scholarship, and engaged
public activity regarding human rights and democratization during
the decades of dictatorship in Korea, and after the dictatorship
ended in 1987."
Cumings' Origins of the Korean War, Vol. 1 (1980) won the John
K. Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association, and his
Origins of the Korean War, Vol. 2 (1991) won the Quincy Wright Book
Award of the International Studies Association.[1]
been behaving?" Professor Bruce Cumings may help with his article
below.
"Americans once carpet-bombed North Korea. It's time to remember that
past" By Bruce Cumings
In May 2007, Cumings was the first recipient of the Kim Dae Jung
Academic Award for Outstanding Achievements and Scholarly
Contributions to Democracy, Human Rights and Peace granted by
South Korea. The award is named in honor of 2000 Nobel Peace Prize
winner and former President of South Korea Kim Dae Jung. The award
recognizes Cumings for his "outstanding scholarship, and engaged
public activity regarding human rights and democratization during
the decades of dictatorship in Korea, and after the dictatorship
ended in 1987."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/13/america-carpet-bombed-north-korea-remember-that-past
The US Air Force subjected North Koreans to three years of `rain and
ruin'. It was a living nightmare - one that still haunts the country
to this day
As they always do on the anniversary of the armistice, North Koreans
celebrated their "victory" in the Korean War on July 27. A few days
later President Donald J Trump remarked that if the North Koreans make
any more threats, they "will be met with fire and fury and frankly
power, the likes of which the world has never seen".
No American president has uttered words like this since Harry Truman
warned the Japanese, between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, either to
surrender or face "a rain of ruin from the air, the likes of which has
never been seen on this earth". Trump's nuclear bluster, made
off-the-cuff between golf rounds, was widely condemned, but a few days
later he doubled down on it.
As a White House staffer told the New York Times, the president
"believes he has a better feel for Mr Kim [Jong Un] than his advisors
do. He thinks of Mr Kim as someone pushing people around, and Mr
Trump thinks he needs to show that he cannot be pushed."
. . .
We are not just a superpower, Gorka went on, "we are now a
hyper-power. Nobody in the world, especially not North Korea, comes
close to challenging our military capabilities." This has been a
truism since the Soviet Union collapsed, but it doesn't explain how
the US has failed to win four of the five major wars it has fought
since 1945. One of those wars was Korea, where rough peasant armies,
North Korean and Chinese, fought the US to a standstill.
It was 64 years ago that North Koreans emerged from this war into a
living nightmare, after three years of "rain and ruin" by the US Air
Force. Pyongyang had been razed to the ground, with the Air Force
stating in official documents that the North's cities suffered greater
damage than German and Japanese cities firebombed during World War II.
Just as Japan scholar Richard Minear termed Truman's atomic attacks
"exterminationist", the great French writer and filmmaker Chris Marker
wrote after a visit to the North in 1957, "Extermination crossed this
land". It was an indelible experience still drilled into the heads of
every North Korean.
On my first visit to Pyongyang in 1981, a guide quickly brought up the
bombing and said it had killed several of his family members. Wall
posters depicted a wizened old woman in the midst of the bombing,
declaring "American imperialists - wolves".
The day after Trump's bluster, the DPRK government stated: "The US
once waged a tragic war that plunged this land into a sea of blood and
fire, and has been leaving no stone unturned to obliterate the DPRK's
ideology and system century after century."
There are 25 million human beings living in North Korea. They bleed
like we do, they live and die like we do, they love their kin like we
do. Trump's callous and cavalier threat was perhaps the most
irresponsible thing he has said since becoming president (which is
really saying something), but most Americans will not know this
because they know nothing about the carpet-bombing of North Korea.
What about the 50 million South Koreans, whose elders also suffered
through this war? "Trump doesn't seem to understand what an alliance
is, and doesn't seem to consider his ally when he says those things,"
Lee Byong-chul, a senior fellow at an institute in Seoul told the New
York Times."
"No American president has mentioned a military option so easily, so
offhandedly as he has." But here Trump has a precedent: Bill Clinton
also didn't bother to consult South Korean president Kim Young Sam
when drawing up plans for a preemptive strike in June 1994."
The next few weeks are critical to this deepening crisis, with annual
"Ulchi-Freedom Guardian" war games set to start up on August 21,
involving tens of thousands of American and South Korean troops.
North Korean generals have been preparing for moments like this for
decades, gaming out war scenarios during several crises going back to
January 1968 when they seized the US spy ship Pueblo and held the crew
for 11 months.
Thus the North's statements in the current crisis (unlike Trump's)
have a concrete, predictable nature: lots of bluster and bombast
combined with quite specific plans, namely four medium-range missiles
to be launched into waters near Guam on August 15th, if Kim Jong Un
gives the go ahead.
Pyongyang always pursues tit-for-tat strategies: the US lifts B1-B
nuclear-capable bombers from Guam for flyovers of South Korea - a
constant not just under Trump but also during Obama's tenure - and the
North chooses a scenario that will call attention to the nuclear
blackmail that the US has pursued going back to the Korean War, and
particularly during the decades from 1958 to 1990, when the US
stationed hundreds of nukes in South Korea with standard plans to use
them in the early stages of a North Korean invasion. Pyongyang also
likes to choose dates that have historical resonance: August 15 is the
anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japanese colonialism in 1945.
Upon the news of his wife's death, Shakespeare's Macbeth said, "Out,
out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that
struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It
is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury." He famously
added, "Signifying nothing". Trump signified this: yet another
American venture in extermination.
Bruce Cumings teaches at the University of Chicago and is the author
of The Korean War: A History
From Wikipedia:
Bruce Cumings (born September 5, 1943) is an American historian of
East Asia, professor, lecturer and author. He is the Gustavus F. and
Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History, and former
chair of the history department at the University of Chicago. He
specializes in modern Korean history and contemporary international
relations.
In May 2007, Cumings was the first recipient of the Kim Dae Jung
Academic Award for Outstanding Achievements and Scholarly
Contributions to Democracy, Human Rights and Peace granted by
South Korea. The award is named in honor of 2000 Nobel Peace Prize
winner and former President of South Korea Kim Dae Jung. The award
recognizes Cumings for his "outstanding scholarship, and engaged
public activity regarding human rights and democratization during
the decades of dictatorship in Korea, and after the dictatorship
ended in 1987."
Cumings' Origins of the Korean War, Vol. 1 (1980) won the John
K. Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association, and his
Origins of the Korean War, Vol. 2 (1991) won the Quincy Wright Book
Award of the International Studies Association.[1]