Sunday, October 01, 2017

Is Donald Trump Preparing to Attack North Korea?



It seemed like a hopeful sign, a step away from the precipice of war on the Korean peninsula.

And maybe even a chance to avoid World War Three.

Rex Tillerson, the U.S. Secretary of State, announced he had opened up several diplomatic channels between the United States and North Korea.

But when Donald Trump heard about that, this is how he reacted.



By tweeting like a maniac, and undercutting his own Secretary of State. 

And while this may just be Trump trying to play the role of bad cop to Tillerson's good cop, it's a dangerous game to play.

For any suggestion the Americans are more interested in bombing North Korea than negotiating with them, can only bring back memories of the way the U.S. bombed North Korea in the 1950s.

And of the war crime the North Koreans can't forget. 



The story dates to the early 1950s, when the U.S. Air Force, in response to the North Korean invasion that started the Korean War, bombed and napalmed cities, towns and villages across the North. It was mostly easy pickings for the Air Force, whose B-29s faced little or no opposition on many missions.

The bombing was long, leisurely and merciless, even by the assessment of America’s own leaders. “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 percent of the population,” Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. 

Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops.



More bombs were dropped on North Korea than were dropped in the Pacific theatre during the Second World War. 

Millions of men, women, and children were killed.



The memory of that merciless massacre has kept the Kim family in power ever since. 

And if the unstable young dictator Kim Jong-Un feels that history is about to repeat itself, who knows what he might do...



Or for that matter what China and Russia might do if they come to the conclusion that they are dealing with a madman, and that if they don't strike first, they could be next.

Trump's tweets are criminally irresponsible, and only reinforce what I have always said.

He is unfit to be president.

And must be removed from office, by whatever means necessary, before he kills us all...



18 comments:

David said...

As one pundit said on CNN today, Trump is not some 3-dimensional chess master. He just makes things up on the fly to continually distract, with his ONLY intention to keep the chaos going, that pleases his 30% base. It is all for them and (he thinks) his political survival.

View Alex Baldwin's Sept. 30 Trump sketch on Global TV (Canada). Plays after two 30-second ads. May have to click “play” button a total of 3 times:

https://www.globaltv.com/saturday-night-live/video/episode/host-ryan-gosling/video.html?v=1059146819514

*
Americans can view the sketch at:

The Chaos President Cold Open - SNL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e4vFMJmBIc&feature=youtu.be

SNL is right -- Trump's chaos is part of a plan
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/01/opinions/trump-snl-chaos-opinion-obeidallah/index.html

https://www.gq.com/story/snl-baldwin-che-trump

David said...

Removing from office.... Meanwhile, Bob Mueller and his team are moving quickly, with interviews of West Wing officials (past and present) to begin in the near future.

There IS light at the end of the dark tunnel of Trump's reality TV "presidency". 8-)

Trump will most likely try to do an end-run around Mueller's final report and decide to pardon everyone, including himself. Will that work, or will the Republicans finally grow spines and join with the Dems to begin impeachment proceedings?

Video: The Kremlin Konnection (Real Time with Bill Maher)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xze1DtXUQeU

Anonymous said...

The abbreviation "G.O.P." officially stands for "Genocidal Orange Pr!ck." Trump is letting people suffer and die in Puerto Rico and now going full-steam ahead with his dangerous nukes game that he doesn't distinguish from Angry Birds on his Twitterphone. I honestly don't even think he saw the 1983 Cold War intrigue movie, starring Matthew Broderick as a teenage computer geek who accidentally manages to hack into the nuclear U.S. nuclear arsenal but thinks he's playing one of the era's popular Space Invaders-style "War Games."

At least Broderick's character was guilty of nothing else besides an innocuous mistake (that was really the fault of the government for not securing their computer networks... hmmmm...) Dotard Fatberg honestly believes this is going to be great for ratings. That's all he cares about. Ratings. Who'd-a thunk it, the weapon of mass destruction leading to the death of us wasn't the nuclear bomb after all. It was television and the Internet.

Oh, well, if Dennis Rodman couldn't save us, and we've got a buffoonish celebrity leading us to World War Three anyway, are James Franco and Seth Rogen our last chance? Or should we just hunker down and play Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" on repeat while binge-watching Ken Burns' documentary about another war America didn't learn from?

MAKE AMERICA GLOW AGAIN! Donald J. Trump approves this message!

Anonymous said...

Curtis LeMay should have been put on trial for his firebombing of Japan and his bombing of North Korea. He had absolutely no regard for the lives of civilians, and was always looking for an excuse to start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

Anonymous said...

He had great regard for the lives of his flyers and the allied ground troops that didn't have to go into the Japan.

As for the Japanese.....there government should have thought about that before starting that war.

Anonymous said...

Mueller is working with NY AG Schneiderman. A president cannot pardon state charges.

jrkrideau said...

Trump's tweet suggests that he was unaware of Tillerson's diplomatic efforts. Or else, he was briefing Tillerson by Twitter about a drastic change in foreign policy

ARRGH!!!.

Nero and Caligula combined don't appear to have been as amazingly incompetent.

jrkrideau said...

That argument may work for Japan.

The air attacks in last two years of the Korean conflict look like war crimes.

Anonymous said...

The argument doesn't even work for Japan. The firebombings of Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe were wanton attacks on the civilian population far in excess of any military necessity and contrary to existing US military policy. Getting away with it simply encouraged Lemay to go for an encore in Korea. And don't get me started on the nuclear attacks, which were simply an experiment on the effects of radiation on humans meant to intimidate Stalin. Lemay should have been tried and hanged in Tokyo with the other war criminals.

Simon said...

hi David...thanks for those links. And you're right, chaos is Trump's main objective. He aims to distract and confuse us, so he can pleasure the rich, or conceal the fact that he is totally unfit to govern a country as big and complex as the United States. But good luck with trying that one on Bob Mueller. He doesn't strike me as somebody who can easily be distracted. But what I fear is that Trump knows that, and is prepared to start a war as the biggest distraction of all...

Simon said...

hi anon...I don't believe Trump is capable of empathy. He really doesn't give a damn about anybody but himself, which is of course what makes him so dangerous. But I have to say that I really loved the movie War Games and after checking it out I think Barry McGuire's Eve of Destruction is the perfect soundtrack for the Trump era, which hopefully ends with the Orange Oaf's destruction. As for Ken Burns' documentary, I had the same reaction you had. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, when will they ever learn?

Simon said...

hi anon 9:58... Even Bob McNamara conceded that if the U.S. hadn't won the war, him and LeMay would have been put on trial as war criminals. And let's not forget that if John Kennedy hadn't held him off, LeMay would have turned the Cuban missile crisis into an excuse to nuke Cuba and the Soviet Union. If you are interested, there are YouTube videos where you can hear LeMay arguing with Kennedy, and it couldn't be more chilling...

Simon said...

hi anon 1:31 am...actually LeMay didn't have great regard for the lives of his flyers. He had them strip their planes of defensive weapons, so they could carry more bombs. And his development of so-called fire storms to incinerate civilians was not militarily necessary, and clearly a war crime...

Simon said...

hi anon 8:37 am... I agree with every word you say. Just because the Japanese started the war and deserved to be punished, doesn't justify murderous actions aimed at civilians that were far in excess of military necessity. And you're right, because he got away with it in Korea, he was able to try the same thing in Korea....

Simon said...

hi jrk...I know it's scary isn't it? They say that Tillerson is just about ready to throw in the towel. Who knew our fate could depend on a multi-billionaire from Big Oil? I find Trump's North Korean Twitter diplomacy to be the scariest thing he's ever done. And I find it hard to believe we can survive a full term of Trump...

David said...

I agree Tillerson may resign soon (not fired).

Trump contradicts Tillerson on North Korea, the latest in a series of put-downs
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-contradicts-tillerson-on-north-korea-the-latest-in-a-series-of-put-downs/2017/10/01/1f11f886-a6bb-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html

Trump loves to misdirect and distract, and thrives on constant chaos. Is he so batshit crazy to think if he bombs North Korea, people will forget about the Mueller investigation and it will somehow "go away"?


martin said...

Thanks for posting this story about LeMay and the bombing of North Korea; I was completely unaware of it. Curiously (?), there is no mention of North Korea in leMay's Wikipedia entry.

Simon said...

hi Martin, you're welcome. I had heard some whispers about it, but it wasn't until I was watching Ken Burns' Vietnam doc, and seeing how many Vietnamese the U.S. had slaughtered, that I decided to check it out. Which explained to me how the Pentagon could have such callous contempt for Asian lives, and would learn nothing from the war in Korea, as they would learn nothing from the one in Vietnam. I don't know who sanitized LeMay's Wikipedia page, but they also forgot to mention that he had suggested carrying out a false flag terrorist incident in Miami, so he could justify bombing Cuba, and maybe even starting the Third World War. How we survived him I don't know...