NORTH KOREA PULLED OFF THE TERRORIST LIST

We're not fighting Eastasia any more! Nor did we ever. They're our friends. And they always were. It's Eurasia who have always been our enemies... or is it Oceania? Anyway.. expect the demilitarized zone to start sprouting Star Bucks and Walmarts soon.

Bush is removing North Korea from the Axis of Evil. When will McCain fly to Pyongyang-- Lindsey and Holy Joe in tow-- for a photo op with Kim Jong-il-- who isn't mentioned in today's NY Times coverage until the 340th paragraph-- and then only as a reminder that the most hated man in the world since the death of Hitler once said that he "loathed" the Korean leader... and called him a "pygmy."

Dr. Steven Porter, the Blue America-endorsed candidate for Congress from Pennsylvania's badly misrepresented third CD in the extreme northwest of that state, doesn't call anyone a pygmy, not even when they deserve such a sobriquet. Instead he lauds the concept of negotiating instead of bombing. Steve's guest post:

THE LESSONS OF NORTH KOREA

-by Dr. Steven Porter


Now that North Korea has begun to reveal its nuclear secrets there is a lesson to be learned. The lesson is that negotiations produce more than threats and aggression.

It is really not a terribly profound revelation but it is one that a fairly comatose White House, a fairly comatose media, and a fairly comatose populace need to hear-- and need to repeat so that the message sinks in.

The reason why negotiations were even tried in the case of North Korea is that there would have been little to gain by invading North Korea. With Iraq there was, of course, the oil. And if anyone doubts that the oil drove the invasion, they need only read Pulitzer Prize writer Ron Suskind’s quote of Paul O’Neill, Bush’s Treasury Secretary in the early days of the Bush Administration. Long before 9/11, plans were being drawn up for taking control of the Iraqi oil fields. (See Suskind, The Price of Loyalty, p. 96.)

Bush and company saw a weak target in Iraq, one for which they calculated (erroneously, as it turned out) that war would be worth the cost in lives and dollars and, even more, that it would not produce adverse reprisals. Adverse reprisals were the key to avoiding war with Russia during the so-called ‘Cold War.’ Adverse reprisals also lurk behind a potential invasion of Iran, and that is probably what has kept Bush and company from exercising their trigger fingers there-- although the possibility of another miscalculation still exists.

What America needs to learn is that negotiation in almost every case (excluding things like the bombing of Pearl Harbor or the aggression of Hitler against the nations of Europe) is far more preferable than war. However, as long as the American people are fed on diets of nationalistic militarism, and as long as America’s news media eschews the processes of peace for those of violence, and particularly as long as the Congress is bought off by the money of what Eisenhower called ‘the military/industrial complex,’ aggression will be more the rule than the exception.

Given the fact that war (biological or nuclear) has the ability now to destroy all life, neither America nor any nation has much time to learn the lessons of peace. That is why JFK said that the world was in a race between education and disaster. He was right in the 1960s, and his words carry an even greater urgency today.

It is time we listened to them.


UPDATE: FAR RIGHT UNHAPPY ABOUT KOREA SETTLEMENT

A few days ago some overheated right-wing propaganda loon claimed Kim Jong-il is an Obama supporter. With the far right howling against Bush's betrayal-- I guess they would have preferred he bomb and occupy Korea-- it doesn't look likely that McCain will embrace the concept of negotiations after all. So unpack your overnight bag, Lindsey. No rug shopping in Yongbyon this weekend.