A favorite tactic of U.S. propaganda is to label a foreign adversary “crazy” to justify a military attack — as is now happening with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un although his nuclear program really makes logical sense, observes Ted Snider.
By Ted Snider
The “insanity” label that America attaches to North Korea has a lot of political utility. First, it colors the interpretation of everything North Korea does. The consideration of a rational motivation for undesirable actions can be prevented: the actions are assumed to be crazy.
North Korean missile launch on March 6, 2017.
Secondly, it makes the target of blame clear. Thirdly, and most importantly, it justifies the claim that rational discussion and diplomacy are pointless and misguided. Since the regime is irrational, it is incapable of listening to reason: the only approach that works is threats, military action and regime change.
There is a long American history of calling opponents crazy. At times, the installation of a compliant but brutal and insane dictator has even been seen as desirable, since later – when compliance turns to inconvenience – applying the crazy label can justify his removal. (For instance, think of Panama’s Manuel Noriega or Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who received American backing before their unpredictable behavior made them targets for regime change.)
More than half a century ago, the insanity strategy was honed by the British and the Americans in Iran. They colorfully painted the democratically elected Mohammad Mossadeq, their target of regime change at the time, as mad, both to blame him for a political crisis and to justify the need to replace him.
Publicly, the media and the politicians created a collage of lunatic adjectives to paint Mossadeq as mad. Ervand Abrahamian, in his book The Coup, has curated a number of them: “impervious to common sense”; “bewildered and desperately short sighted”; and “marred by nervous instability.” He was called “hopelessly irrational”; “eccentric”; “hysterical”; “mentally unstable”; and “crazy.” He was consistently portrayed as childish, erratic and emotional. Abrahamian says government officials frequently likened him to a character out of Alice and Wonderland. They painted a picture of Mad Hatter Mossadeq.
But they were being disingenuous. Privately, their recollections of him belied the propaganda. Sam Falle, a British foreign office expert on Iran, said years later that Mossadeq was “a sincere and honest politician.” Falle said, “He was non-violent and . . . people loved him, and saw him as a sort of Iranian Mahatma Gandhi.” Falle called Mossadeq “brilliant.” In other words, Western politicians depicted Mossadeq as the Mad Hatter in public while recognizing him as Gandhi in private.
The British were not alone in their secret praise of the quite sane Mohammad Mossadeq. Henry Grady, the U.S. ambassador to Iran at the start of the crisis, admitted, when safely retired, that Mossadeq was “a man of great intelligence, wit and education . . . . He reminds me of . . . . Mahatma Gandhi.” Gandhi again! Grady’s successor, Loy Henderson, who played a decisive role in the coup against Mossadeq, remembered him as “a charming person” with a “high sense of humor.”
Crazy Kim Jong Un?
More than half a century later, the same strategy is being applied to Kim Jong Un. Is Kim crazy? I don’t know. But the question in its general sense is irrelevant to American foreign policy. The North Korean leader’s sanity is only relevant in the particular area that affects his governance and foreign policy. Or, in this case, it is only really relevant in so far as it affects his nuclear weapons program and policy.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
And, as with Mossadeq, government pronouncements and the public diagnosis don’t align with private statements by more knowledgeable people. Siegfried Hecker, the last American to inspect North Korea’s nuclear facilities, said “[s]ome like to depict Kim as being crazy. . . . He’s not crazy and he’s not suicidal. And he’s not even unpredictable.”
Similarly, John Feffer, who has written extensively about Korea, agrees that Kim is not irrational; rather, the “No. 1 rational goal for Kim Jong-un is preservation of his own authority and the preservation of his system of government. He knows that any attack of South Korea or the United States would spell the end of North Korea as a country, and of course, by extension, the end of him and his regime. So pure self-preservation dictates that, no, North Korea is not going to engage in any kind of attack on a sovereign country.”
William J. Perry, the former Secretary of Defense who negotiated for President Clinton with North Korea, says, “But they are not crazy, as some people believe. North Korea is a pariah state and nearly alone in the world, but there is logic to the actions of its leadership. Fundamental to that logic is an overriding commitment to keeping their regime in power, to sustain the Kim dynasty.”
Former President Jimmy Carter recently criticized the dehumanizing irrationality approach to North Korea with the reminder that “until we’re willing to talk to them and treat them with respect as human beings, which they are, then I don’t think we’re going to make any progress.”
The Logic of Deterrence
So, what is the logic to which William Perry refers? It is the logic of deterrence: ironically, a logic you adopt when you don’t believe your opponent will listen to reason.
Ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi shortly before he was murdered on Oct. 20, 2011.
It is a logic unfortunately reinforced by the hard, historical lessons learned by Iraq and Libya when they abandoned their nuclear weapons programs. (Not only did the U.S. mount invasions of the two countries but the two leaders died gruesome deaths, Saddam Hussein by hanging and Muammar Gaddafi sodomized with a knife and then murdered.)
The North Korean articulation of deterrence is that they’ll negotiate over their nuclear weapons program when nuclear weapons are no longer necessary to deter the existential threat that is ever present in the form of U.S. policy. If the two parties can talk about the existential threat, they can talk about the deterrent to the existential threat. There is a balance and proportionality to the logic.
North Korea’s Deputy Ambassador Kim In-ryong recently put it this way to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres: “As long as the U.S. hostile policy and nuclear threat continue, the DPRK, no matter who may say what, will never place its self-defensive nuclear deterrence on the negotiating table.”
The North Korean logic was articulated the same way by Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho. Recently, Ri Yong-ho explained to the U.N, that its nuclear program is “to all intents and purposes, a war deterrent for putting an end to nuclear threat of the U.S. and for preventing its military invasion, and our ultimate goal is to establish the balance of power with the U.S.”
Most importantly, Kim Jong Un, himself, has also appealed to this logic. Kim stated that “Our final goal is to establish the equilibrium of real force with the U.S. and make the U.S. rulers dare not talk about military options.” Those military options have included the explicit statement in the 2002 U.S. nuclear posture review that North Korea is a country that the U.S. should be prepared to drop a nuclear bomb on. The existential nuclear threat has continued uninterrupted in the form of U.S.-South Korean military exercises on the North Korean border that include stealth bombers simulating nuclear bombing attacks on North Korea.
Toward the end of September, as the crisis heightened, U.S. B-1 bombers, accompanied by an escort of fighter jets, tore along North Korea’s coastline in a “show of force” that encroached closer on its coastline than had any previous threat.
Defense Secretary James Mattis recently warned North Korea that its actions “would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people.” And, most recently and most importantly, President Donald Trump revealed his own plans to the North Koreans and the United Nations when he said that if North Korea threatened the U.S. or its allies, America “will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”
Proportional Moves
So tightly does North Korea hold to the logic of their nuclear program that Siegfried Hecker calls North Korean nuclear policy predictable. The policy is predictable because it is proportional. If America threatens North Korea with nuclear destruction — as it did in the 2002 nuclear posture review, as it did when it simulated nuclear bombing attacks and as it did when Trump threatened it with total destruction — then the deterrent response will be a nuclear weapons program. Since the threat isn’t diminishing, the deterrent isn’t diminishing.
But, if the threat diminished, then there could be a proportionate diminution of the deterrent. On two occasions, in 2014 and 2015, North Korea offered to freeze its testing of missiles if the U.S. froze the threatening joint military exercises it holds with South Korea. On both occasions, the U.S. rejected that offer.
Noam Chomsky has called the logic of proportionality “a kind of tit-for-tat policy.” In Who Rules the World, he explains the predictable policy as “You make a hostile gesture, and we’ll respond with some crazy gesture of our own. You make an accommodating gesture, and we’ll reciprocate in some way.”
This pattern describes the making and breaking of U.S.-North Korean nuclear agreements from 1994 to the present. In each case, North Korea froze its nuclear program in exchange for proportionate concessions by the U.S. and, in each case, North Korea reactivated its nuclear weapons program when the U.S. reneged on its concessions.
The historical pattern reveals, not the insanity of North Korean nuclear weapons program, but a very predictable logic. The insanity label may serve a utilitarian purpose by readying the American people for war, but it does not serve the truth, and it does not serve the higher priority of freezing North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and preserving peace on the Korean peninsula.
Ted Snider writes on analyzing patterns in US foreign policy and history.
This article should be red by Trump and all Americans.
If Americans didn’t have nuclear bomb they couldn’t threaten North Korea,simple as that.
So North has to have nuclear bomb then American presidents ( even ) moron ones will stop the threat.
Great post, thank’s for sharing
He, his father, and his grandfather have been running that country for 70 years. Whatever their many and manifest faults, short term thinking and suicidal conduct are not among them. If “crazy” it has been a functional crazy.
Reality needs to intrude here.
no Rothschild bank in NK
Trump: “I don’t want to go quickly and just make a statement for the sake of making a political statement. I want to know the facts.”
Me: “Yeah. Riiiiiight.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/09/25/irans-supposed-missile-launch-was-fake-us-officials-say.html
The United States cannot tolerate a nuclear armed N. Korea because it cannot be deterred and it cannot be contained. This open-ended threat leaves the destruction of N. Korea as the only alternative. Barring some last minute move by China to step in and strip N. Korea of its nuclear arsenal with a guarantee of security, the outbreak of a major war on the peninsula is a certainty given the rapid buildup of Kim’s offensive capabilities.
Add to the above the threat that N. Korea represents to the current international order (aka the American Empire) and there can be very little doubt what the final outcome will be. Those in power have decided that the Empire is not about to die are their watch.
Why people can’t wrap there heads around this is the real mystery to me. Complacency is the real enemy. Please note we have not been here before.
Yes, people need to read a few history books on how appeasement has worked. NK has a stated goal to take over SK. Once that happens who is going to stand up to Kim with his nuclear arsenal? Nobody, leaving this Stalinist thug in the driver’s seat to intimidate and threaten the world to get whatever it wants.
Time is short.
Paul, agree. Here’s a re-post of mine-but relevant: In 1991, Bush the elder, began his Presidential Nuclear Initiative and withdrew tactical nuclear weapons from the peninsula. The following year, a Joint Declaration, binding both sides not to test, or in any way deploy or store nuclear weapons entered into force. The North ignored it’s public commitment and secretly continued it’s nuclear program. Non-proliferation and countries bound to the NPT failed to make the Middle East a nuclear weapons free zone and they will fail in the Korea(s). How can we, the U.S. withdraw our nuclear umbrella and suddenly adopt a foreign policy of neutrality? A new security alliance would require a comprehensive change that would necessitate an entire denuclearized region. What chance is there for a truly successful NPT or the fantasy of a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty? Sanctions, endless Security Council UN meetings, have come to naught, deterrence was and remains the only option. Our armed forces have a Mutual Defense Treaty with Japan and South Korea and we’re going to stick to it! Xi and Putin know this and so, they better pull out all the stops and get Un to behave, because everyone knows what’s next…the world is just days away from catastrophe.
Why, with all its tens of billions of dollars of anti-missal defenses in Japan, on multiple ships and six THAAD batteries (a billion each) in South Korea, does the US NOT shoot down NK missals??
Here is the only analysis of this question I have seen in the press and it should come as no surprise to readers here.
https://oldfathertime.com/accutron_watch_repair.htm
How can an Empire squandering its resources on this scale go on for long?
This is another wound to the empire – it aura of invincibility is pierced by the absence of action. Thanks Don, when it comes to disrupting the Imperial quest for world domination and its continual slaughter of innocent people your are doing the world a great service.
There is no Military Industrial Complex without an evil country that the US heroes must fight in order to save the world. If the US goes to war with North Korea it would basically be a declaration of war on China and all hell will break loose. This appears to be nothing more than hype to inflate defense spending up even more (I just laugh my ass off calling it defense). As crazy as the people running the US are I doubt any action against North Korea will happen because there will simply be no threats to inflate the military budget with. What will the media say if North Korea falls? Those evil doers on Iceland are coming to eat our children? When a country fly jets up to the border of another country it is no different than running up to your neighbors garage and a waving a loaded gun which could result in your neighbors doing something crazy in response like getting a big gun just in case you actually try to use the gun you are waving. Note: Kim Jong Un is a bit whacked
The national Ego of the USA is quite pathetic.
How stupid of Obama (and Trump) to turn down DPRK’s offer of a nuclear freeze if USA stops war tests in the Sea of Japan.
Pathetic Egos deserve the blowback they receive.
Oh, I guess it was okay with you how they pull out Otto’s teeth with pliers, or kill family members with rocket launchers. Or Li’l Kim offs his big brother for all the world to see. I shed some gator tears when they turn into a charcoal briquette.
At least he didn’t go to Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, etc to kill millions of civilians and use depleted uranium on them.
Bullshit, there is no justification to starve and brainwash your people to keep a family of pigs in power whether some Koreans accept and like it that way or not. The USA wants an excuse to stay in Korean and that’s why there was no Peace Treaty after the cessation of hostilities after the Korean “War”. . This cynical game has been going on too long. We do not want the Kims out of power in North Korea, We want to perpetuate this farce and the Kims are more than willing to do there part . Like NATO, this is unnecessary and a vestige from the past, some might even say Imperialist Policies. Silly Trump is too stupid to play this game it appears but I think he will fall into line. He has shown this tendency with Russia and Syria. We see with his tweeting that he has a character flaw regarding his need to not let anyone get on top of him, he has to respond quickly, degrade and hurt them and try to extract a cost of some kind. This is what Presidents of the USA do but they do it with style. Trump has none and this new kid in North Korea is rather graceless as well. OOPs, I’ve got to run.
The real reason the US Gov is upset by NK going nuclear is that it dilutes American power. If NK gets nukes, Japan and Taiwan will follow suit. Slowly dominoes will fall around the world, and we will end up with a global Mexican standoff, where nobody dares pull the trigger. With each new member in the nuclear capable club, membership means (temporary) security, but not so much aggressive potency. You could end up with a lot of folks holding these expensive and dangerous toys, and wondering what good they are if you can’t use them, as Donald Trump mused at one point during his initiation into the mysteries of nuclear weapons possession.
Obviously the only way out of this stupid situation is to all sit down and come up with a verifiable way to eliminate these weapons from the Earth, which is a doable option. The only other option is to sit around and wait for the damn things to go off. Take your pick, but you don’t have as much time to make up your mind as you have talked yourself into believing. The doomsday clock is ticking, and a lot closer than it’s creators like to admit to MIDNIGHT.
Keep dreaming. 1 country that will always refuse verification is Israel. And with that 1 refusal, Mike, your whole verifiable system will collapse, sorry, not even take off.
Is the US the puppet master or the puppet?
Both. Master of some, puppet of others. The whole thing is a bizarre shadow play where roles are unclear and constantly changing.
It is the puppet master of Nato & all other countries it controls, it is the puppet of Israel in terms of the Middle East.
Of all countries in the world why is the US after North Korea? For two main reasons:
1. North Korea recognizes Palestine and calls Israel a terrorist occupier.
2. North Korea had no debt obligations to the International Zionist Usury Cabal.
If North Korea submits to the US, US posture will change. At the end of the day, it’s always Israel First.
I think you overlook 1 important reason, if not THE most important 1:
China “containment”. The US needs to continue justifying its military presence on the peninsula so that it can add to its encirclement of China, and some of Russia.
By keeping the peninsula on red alert type war footing, the US has already installed a THAAD system in SK, not really to shoot down NK missiles, but to keep an eye on China with that all-powerful radar that is part of Thaad.
The US is presently doing some stuff which recalls the Gulf of Tonkin in the Vietnam era.
“Could North Korea Really Shoot Down a U.S. F-15 or B-1 Bomber?”
It seems to me that somebody in the Trump “Administration” is spoiling for a war. They’re busy waving a red flag in front of the North Korean leadership, for if NK can be baited into shooting first, China will supposedly stay out of it.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/could-north-korea-really-shoot-down-us-f-15-or-b-1-bomber-22467?page=show
“South Korea’s Preemptive Decapitation Strike Is a Bad Idea”
https://www.cato.org/blog/south-koreas-preemptive-decapitation-strike-bad-idea
The whole US government is a game of selfish, immoral liars trying to outwit each other in their desperate search for power. Try not to become entangled in their games, they lead nowhere human beings need to go.
A Common Ground Magazine post shared from Sacred Dreams
It has been my experience that the one that families call the “crazy one” is often the sane one. This is particularly true in very dysfunctional families where ideas of healthy functioning are turned upside down. In these families, members often repress their authentic feelings and turn against anyone who reminds them of their unresolved issues and patterns. As a result, the truth-speakers, the ones who refuse to contain their feelings, those who challenge and humanize the toxic status quo, are often scapegoated and vilified, made to feel crazy by those who lack the courage and insight to see beyond the family’s madness. If you have been labeled the ‘crazy one’, take heart. You are truly not alone. Most great creators and paradigm shifters were met with fiery resistance by those afraid to grow. Whatever you do, do not allow your voice to fade away in the face of their messaging. Your voice, your vision, your ways of being, live at the heart of your unique soul’s journey and are the key to collective transformation. No one has the right to bury them under a bushel of shame. No one! And remember- what is crazy to an unconscious person is often brilliantly sane to one who is awakening. Without you, we are lost. Blessed be the ‘crazy’ ones!
~Jeff Brown
I agree there is nothing “crazy” about North Korea’s strategy. But I also see the discussion of “sanity” as a diversion from the real problem. That it continues works for both the Neocons and the “anti-Neocons”. The former can use this for simplistic propaganda to influence the masses, and the latter can use rational arguments to explain how the US has not usually been a Good Country in the past century or so.
The North Koreans already possess all the “deterrence” they need.
title: “Pentagon scenario of a new Korean war estimates 20,000 deaths daily in South Korea, retired US general says”
I emphasize “conventional” because the North Koreans possess massive stocks of chemical weapons. A bombardment of Seoul with nerve gas would multiply that “20,000/day” number many fold.
So they don’t need nukes. But they’re getting them anyway. Something else is going on here besides “deterrence”.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/25/korean-war-simulation-by-dod-estimates-20000-deaths-daily-in-south.html
It is so ironic that the craziest nation on the planet at this time goes around calling everyone else crazy. It’s like when our leaders call all the real news fake news, and call their totally fake news the only real news. What else can one do when they are completely in the wrong – it must be that we alone are right, the exceptionally pure white saviors of the planet, which is steeped in darkness. Exceptional indeed – exceptionally deluded! The inversion of language in the mouths of the oppressors that Orwell delineated so well is in full bloom in the USA. The danger with these manifestations of paranoid delusion is that it often ends in acts of violence against the evil enemies, who are perceived to be everywhere. Like the tanks and missiles we have drawn up to the borders of Russia, because of their supposed aggressive intentions. Or the fleet and air force closing in on North Korea because of some imaginary “imminent threat.” The real threat to America is it’s own aggressive intentions and the false fears that stoke it’s tendency to violence.
Yeah, yeah… it makes sense. Yawn. I followed N Korean news since it became available on the Internet maybe 20 years ago. It was filled with daily, virulent attacks toward the US everyday… virtually every news item. A few articles about “juche” or how Kim Il Jong invented golf and got a hole in one… every hole. N Korea is like damaged goods. You don’t try to fix it. You throw it away.
I suppose you join the Donald in wanting to destroy North Korea? Is that what you would call nuclear diplomacy? Are you capable of throwing away a whole country, or would you rather sit back and watch somebody else do it?
Oh I suppose it’s just a little Gulf of Tonkin incident away. Just get the Poles to invade Germany again, and have Building 7 fall down all by itself.
We should just walk away. We live on the other side of the World. The only reason we’re entangled with them is we ended up on their doorstep after defeating the Japanese Empire, and we were sold on the idea that communism was just as big a threat as is the Synarchists’ Fascism/NAZIism Projects (it wasn’t, and it shifted the focus off of the “Boardroom NAZIs” who are still around, and played us into their Imperial “chess games” that they’ve kept going, for centuries now). NK is obviously caught up in good ole fashioned, Traditional “Emperor Worship” where the “GodKing” gets a hole-in-one every time. NONE of that is our concern, That is something for them to work out, or live with, as the case may be. This whole “problem” will just go away if WE would just come home and tend to our own, genuine National Interests, which have virtually NOTHING to do with the so-called “Old World” and all of its convoluted, CENTURIES-LONG (older than our Nation itself), Imperial shenanigans.
Walking away from NK would be eminently sensible. But then we would have to walk away from our obsession with ruling the world. WE JUST CAN’T REST COMFORTABLE UNTIL WE ARE THE DADDY OF THE WORLD, AND RULE OVER EVERYBODY. EVERYONE
IS MEANT TO WORSHIP AND FEAR US, AND DO WHAT WE SAY, UNTIL THEY DO, WE HAVE TO MAKE THEM DO SO. Is this crazy? Yes – this is who we are. We who would rule the world are the worst kind of crazy – our entire history proves it.
That’s only for the last 70 or so years, as an outcome of WWII, and Synarchist designs on communism which THEY helped birth to justify their extreme right-wing plans. I’m trying to remind people of where we were for the previous 200 years before that…we were very leary of getting entangled with the World for all of these geopolitical games. Time moves on, Eras change, and we MUST change too. It will happen, with or without our cooperation.
I’ve had it with buying into these American government propaganda campaigns. After watching how Gaddafi was brought down, and to only later find out what a good leader he was for his country men and women, is a sad critique to how these invasions go. Just because America has war criminals guiding our nations foreign policies, doesn’t mean we citizens need to be accessories to the crime.
Wayne Madsen writes another compatible article to read next to Mr Snider’s great essay here on the subject of the DPRK.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/09/25/trump-fails-understand-north-korea-existential-fears.html
I keep wondering ‘why’ we want to destroy Libya, etc. People point out monetary gain as the primary reason, but for many of these decision makers, I think that is very indirect. For many of them I think it is simply ‘fun’ to rule the World. I suspect it is also fun for many of them, to kill people.
Podesta emails indicate it was about Libyan support for the new Chinese banking order to replace IMF/World bank order. Then there was Khadaffy literally threatening Saudi leaders with assassination at an Arab League summit. And of course the Zionists/CIA cabal always had it in for him.
H wanted to make her rep, O was against it. Kadafi created three African Banks to replace IMF. Plus Libya was another successful muslim socialist nation.
I too have wondered that very aspect of ‘the why’ behind the Libyan invasion. One thing to take note of though, is how Benghazi was used to funnel arms up and into Turkey to be distributed to the Syrian al Queda affiliates. Also if you recall Sidney Blumenthal’a text messages to Hillary were all about making Libya’s rebuilding process all about making it profitable for Hillary’s donors to cash in on her war crime. Plus, Gaddafi was getting to independent for his own good, and the Empire can’t have that….now can it?
Libya challenged US rule over Africa, that was reason enough to destroy him and his moderate socialist country.
I remind all to google Oded Yinon Plan 1982/US Neocons. You’ll see the original plan that came out of Israel to overthrow the powerful secular leaders of Arab countries (Houssein, Gadaffi, Assad, etc.). The remaining squabbling Muslim sects would easily be conquered – making way for a Greater Israel.
US neocons (Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Wm Kristoll III, etc) picked that plan right up, tucked it into American Enterprise Institute which spawned Project for the New American Century- 1998….and the rest is Iraq War history and the destruction of more civilizations of the Middle East.
[One source for this Yinon Plan info, suggested it was Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz’ plan originally and that they arranged for the Israeli journalist Oded Yinon to write it up and present as his.]
And if you compare the Yinon Plan with what has happened in the ME, you’d be amazed to see how close the Plan is to reality.
Hillary Clinton had a good, public chuckle about Khadaffi’s death.
Thanks for the link, Joe. I’ve always respected Wayne Madsen’s perspective.
You are welcome. Joe
Of course, its is completely irrational for NK to fret over attack by the “beneficent empire” as some historians describe the US and its 72 year long perpetual war. He was just a baby when Sadam and his government were mercilessly slaughtered, hardly remembers Libya and takes no notice of the US making a nuclear deal with Iran which it now openly intends to renege on.
I would hope that rational people would be suspicious of making deals with a party with that track record.
The insanity label does not ready THIS American for war. It is time to wake up from the Post-WWII peace-keeping Mission, we were sold on, as necessary for the World. If it ever was necessary, that Mission has long been accomplished. It’s time to resume our traditional role as a Continental Republic whose natural interests extend only to the North American Continent to Panama, and the Caribbean Island Nations, with the added policy of promoting the General Welfare of this “Neighborhood” we live in. The military bases should be closed around the World, and the Troops brought home finally, with the military cut way down to a National Guard, focused on Continental Defense of Coasts, Airspace and Land. We have no natural interests in geopolitical “chess games” conducted around the Globe (the People were loathe to enter into the World Wars in the first place. THIS should be our preferred attitude). NK, SK, Japan, China, and Russia can come to an amicable agreement, where our presence is only an irritant; a mindset left over from the Post-WWII era, which is CLEARLY over. So we MUST stand down, and come home, to put our own House in order.
A favorite tactic of U.S. propaganda is to label a foreign adversary “crazy” to justify a military attack — as is now happening with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un although his nuclear program really makes logical sense, observes Ted Snider.
By Ted Snider
The “insanity” label that the left wing media, Hollywood movie stars, and the democrats attach to Donald Trump has a lot of political utility. First, it colors the interpretation of everything he does. The consideration of a rational motivation for undesirable actions can be prevented: the actions are assumed to be crazy.
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Secondly, it makes the target of blame clear. Thirdly, and most importantly, it justifies the claim that rational discussion and diplomacy are pointless and misguided. Since Trump is irrational, he is incapable of listening to reason: the only approach that works is threats and impeachment.
Your words match perfectly to what is going on in the States now