A U.S. War Against North Korea Would Be an Utterly UNJUST IMPERIALIST WAR—And Threaten the Whole World!
Drive Out the Trump/Pence Regime BEFORE They Incinerate Humanity!

April 19, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Don’t Think Like the Imperialists—Think, and Act, in the Interests of Humanity

The major media in the U.S. are not “neutral” actors who give people material to be able to make scientific assessments of events in the world. They are training you to think in a certain way that actually leads people away from the truth and goes against the interests of humanity. A case in point—check out the article “Pence Talks Tough on North Korea, but U.S. Stops Short of Drawing Red Line” in the New York Times (April 17, p. A8 in the New York print edition)

In describing a statement by North Korea’s UN representative denouncing the Trump regime’s threats, the Times article puts quotes around the words “imperialism” and “sovereignty”—as if those terms should be dismissed as mere rhetoric. In fact, these terms point to what is at the heart of the issue in the crisis in Korea.

The U.S. invasion of Korea in 1950 that killed three million… the tens of thousands of U.S. troops in South Korea and massive nuclear-armed forces nearby… and now Trump’s threats, including the brandishing of nukes… All this and more are the actions of an imperialist power.

And to these imperialists, while they hold their “homeland” to be “sacred” and borders to be “inviolable”—fuck the sovereignty of other countries, especially oppressed countries around the world.

A different article on the same page of the New York Times (“The North Korea Paradox: Why There Are No Good Options on Nuclear Arms”) has a subhead saying “The High Cost of a Deal”—referring to any possible U.S. agreement with North Korea around its nuclear missile program. The article notes some things that the North Koreans may demand in any agreement: a “tacit acknowledgment” of their right to retain existing nuclear programs, a declaration by the U.S. that the North Korean government is legitimate and will not seek to overthrow it, the lifting of sanctions, and the withdrawal or reduction of U.S. military forces in South Korea.

“High cost”? What is so damn unreasonable about any of those demands? They’re only unreasonable if you are coming at things from the standpoint of the imperialist rulers!

The role of the media, including those of the liberal wing of the rulers, is to get people into looking at society and the world from the interests of the capitalist-imperialist system. People need to reject being drawn into thinking about “what’s good for America”—and need to think and act in the name of humanity, by opposing and working for the defeat of “our” rulers.

Imperialism means huge monopolies and financial institutions controlling the economies and the political systems—and the lives of people—not just in one country but all over the world. Imperialism means parasitic exploiters who oppress hundreds of millions of people and condemn them to untold misery; parasitic financiers who can cause millions to starve just by pressing a computer key and thereby shifting vast amounts of wealth from one place to another. Imperialism means war—war to put down the resistance and rebellion of the oppressed, and war between rival imperialist states—it means the leaders of these states can condemn humanity to unbelievable devastation, perhaps even total annihilation, with the push of a button.

Imperialism is capitalism at the stage where its basic contradictions have been raised to tremendously explosive levels. But imperialism also means that there will be revolution—the oppressed rising up to overthrow their exploiters and tormentors—and that this revolution will be a worldwide struggle to sweep away the global monster, imperialism.

Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:6

There is a very real threat right now of aggressive U.S. threats against North Korea turning into a horrific U.S. war, including use of nuclear weapons.

In Washington, DC, Trump threatened North Korea in godfather fashion, “They gotta behave.” Meanwhile, in a visit to the “demilitarized” zone between North and South Korea, Mike Pence declared that the “era of strategic patience is over.”

What the fuck does that mean!?!

The U.S. invaded Korea in 1950 and waged a war of mass murder that killed three million people and razed to the ground almost every building in the north. Since then the U.S. has stationed 30,000 troops in South Korea. Trump openly talks about making North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “disappear.” And this fascist imperialist is now warning a small country to “behave”?

The U.S. already has severe sanctions on North Korea and is threatening to tighten the noose. They’ve implied that they’re waging “cyberwarfare” against North Korea, including targeting their missile program. They’re setting up anti-missile “defenses” in South Korea that are provocatively aimed at North Korea and their main backer, China. All this has been fucking “patience”?

And now the U.S., under the fascist Trump/Pence regime, intends to break with its past behavior and “patience” with something more hyper-aggressive, with “all options on the table”? What do threats of “all options” mean from a regime headed by a man who has asked, “If we have them [nuclear weapons], why can’t we use them?”

A sign of how serious all this is: the government of Japan said it is working on plans to “evacuate” 60,000 Japanese now in South Korea in the event the crisis escalates. And China’s foreign minister raised the possibility of “war break[ing] out on the peninsula.”

While exactly where all this is headed can’t be predicted, there is a certain “logic” that is driving things in an extremely dangerous direction. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” call concentrates the aim of those heading the U.S. now to dramatically enforce and strengthen American domination over other powers and the world as a whole. They are moving to profoundly and violently recast the way things have been for decades. They are rewriting the rules on use of military force, including nuclear war—not whether to threaten the use of nukes but how overtly to do so.

This is a regime that cannot allow even a perception of “weakness” and “lack of resolve.” In the face of North Korea’s refusal to cave in to U.S. demands, Trump/Pence may decide on a “preemptive” attack or use a manufactured incident—like the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident justifying U.S. escalation in the Vietnam War.

While Kim Jong-un heads an oppressive regime, as a source of oppression, repression and violence in the world, including as a nuclear threat to humanity, North Korea’s impact is microscopic compared to what the U.S. imperialists have done for decades—and now in a greatly heightened way with the Trump/Pence regime. Given the history of the Korean War and what the U.S. has done up to today, it’s not irrational for the North Korean regime to think the U.S. would initiate an enormously destructive war of aggression. And as they have pointed out, Libya’s Qaddafi made a “deal” with the U.S. and other powers to shut down “weapons of mass destruction” programs, thinking that would keep his power intact—and they still massively bombed the country, overthrew his regime, and had him killed.

In this intense situation, some intended move—or even a miscalculation—by the U.S. or North Korea could quickly spiral out of control and engulf the whole Korean Peninsula in war. The U.S. not only has tens of thousands of troops in South Korea but huge nuclear-armed naval forces in the area and tens of thousands more troops in Japan. North Korea reportedly has some missiles that can reach South Korea and Japan, as well as vast array of artillery trained on the South. In addition, it claims it is close to developing missiles capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. A U.S. war against North Korea could lead to millions of lives lost in the region, and it could spread beyond that. And if the nuclear “genie” is pulled out of the bottle in Korea, what is to prevent its use elsewhere by the U.S., and other nuclear powers?

Whatever the justification claimed by the U.S., such a war would be an utterly unjust IMPERIALIST WAR. And it would threaten all of humanity with nuclear incineration.

As communists, we are working for a world without nuclear weapons. And when the revolution comes to power in the U.S., the new socialist state would dismantle the nukes in the imperialist arsenal and refuse to produce or use such weapons. (For a visionary and concrete blueprint for this socialist society, get into the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian and adopted by the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party.) But in the world today—where the U.S. is armed to the teeth with nukes, has used them, has consistently refused to pledge not to use such weapons first, and now has a president who openly hankers to use them—the U.S. is absolutely in the wrong to demand of anyone else that they must disarm.

The situation is extremely urgent. People everywhere must oppose the U.S. imperialist aggression in Korea. But there is an especially big, historical responsibility for people living in the U.S. A military attack by the U.S. would be a horrible war crime committed in the name of the people in the U.S. The people must begin right now to not just refuse to go along with the Trump/Pence threats but to actively and militantly oppose them. The best possible outcome for humanity would be the prevention of such a war and, in any case, the defeat of the U.S.’s unjust bullying and threats.

The fascists in power cannot be allowed to consolidate their hold on power. DRIVE OUT THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME BEFORE THEY EXTERMINATE HUMANITY!

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A U.S. War Against North Korea Would Be an Utterly UNJUST IMPERIALIST WAR—And Threaten the Whole World! Drive Out the Trump/Pence Regime BEFORE They Incinerate Humanity!

A U.S. War Against North Korea Would Be an Utterly UNJUST IMPERIALIST WAR—And Threaten the Whole World!
Drive Out the Trump/Pence Regime BEFORE They Incinerate Humanity!