Today, August 8 2017, the day before the anniversary of the heinous incineration of 70,000 in Nagasaki, Donald Trump declared, “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen… he has been very threatening beyond a normal state. They will be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”
August 6, 1945 U.S. dropped the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima (a city of 350,000). 140,000 massacred, hundreds of thousands were wounded and suffered from radiation sickness.
President Harry Truman announced the bombing and threatened Japan: “If they do not now accept our terms [for immediate surrender] they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the likes of which has never been seen on this earth.”
August 9, 1945 U.S. dropped an even more powerful bomb on Nagasaki destroying the city and murdering another 70,000 people.
These are the only uses of nuclear weapons for warfare in history. But they are not only a nightmare from the past. The Trump/Pence Regime is at work dragging humanity into this cruel hellscape with heightening threats against North Korea that echo the words of Truman.
In the Name of Humanity—from the standpoint of the people of the world—this is unacceptable, and cannot go on. His threat today is mafioso on the most horrible scale. The world cannot be held hostage to this fascist regime’s threats of war.
An Escalation in a Game of Nuclear Chicken With the Whole World At Stake
The Trump/Pence fascist regime has escalated the threat of war against North Korea. On Saturday (the anniversary of the United States’ lethal atomic bombing), the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to impose sanctions on North Korea. The sanctions cut approximately $1 billion of export revenue from North Korea. In defending the sanctions while making clear military action was still on the table, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley stated, “What I will tell you from the United States’ perspective, we’re prepared to do whatever it takes to defend ourselves and defend our allies.” The sanctions were a reaction to Kim Jong-un’s military testing two intercontinental ballistic missiles this past July.
Earlier today, in response to the sanctions, North Korea criticized the United States with threats to mobilize all its resources to take “physical action” in retaliation. Trump’s national security adviser H.R. McMaster in an MSNBC interview stated that, “The president has been very clear about it: He said he’s not going to tolerate North Korea being able to threaten the United States.”
According to the Washington Post today, “North Korea has successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles, crossing a key threshold on the path to becoming a full-fledged nuclear power, U.S. intelligence officials have concluded in a confidential assessment.”
This is an ominous game of nuclear chicken that is being played by Trump, who has several times questioned with full seriousness why he can’t use nuclear weapons if he has them, and has already deployed in Afghanistan the “mother of all bombs,” the largest non-nuclear weapon in history. Any U.S. military action against North Korea—according to all commentators and experts across the spectrum—will have devastating consequences in destruction and loss of life, especially across the whole Korean peninsula.
Trump says, “They will be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.” We should read this as what it is: an open-threat to incinerate humanity, putting current and future generations in peril. “Like the world has never seen,” can only mean more damaging than what the US has previously dropped. No one should have illusions about the grotesquely criminal nature of Trump’s threats, and the danger to the entire world.
But don’t we have to do something? Isn’t Kim Jong-un a madman?
Remember, this is the same playbook of demonization the U.S. has run against anyone they seek to depose or overthrow or go to war against. Remember Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega—weren’t we told that “they have to be stopped”? And remember how the lies about “stopping weapons of mass destruction,” “saving lives,” and so on were used to justify the invasions, bombings, and occupations in many areas of the world that have led to the violent murder of hundreds of thousands of people and tens of millions being forced out of their homes?
The development of these capabilities by the North Korean regime is changing the “balance of power” in this whole region—potentially constraining the ability of the U.S. imperialists to dominate and wield influence in this region. This is deemed unacceptable by the powers that be on “both sides of the aisle”—from the Trump/Pence regime to the Democrats and Obama, to the military and the national security establishment. The interests of these rulers are sharply and profoundly opposed to those of the great majority of people here and around the world.
This is about U.S. domination and great-power rivalry, now escalated in doctrine to Trump’s America First. For those who say, “There are no good options,” please consider: whose voice and viewpoint are you reflecting, even parroting? From whose standpoint are there “no good options”?
From the standpoint of humanity, or from “America First”?
This Nightmare Must End
The fascists in the White House cannot be allowed to consolidate their hold on power. As we have said since our founding, Trump is more dangerous than even Hitler because he has his finger on the nuclear trigger. In the name, and for the interests of all humanity, we must do everything in our power not only to oppose any completely unjust threats and aggression against Korea, but to drive these criminals from power. All those who believe that people of every country are full human-beings must refuse to go along with this regime’s threats, to oppose them with courage, creativity, and conviction and build the movement to drive them out of power, not just for ourselves but in the name of humanity.
This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go Before They Exterminate Humanity!
J’Accuse: Read More about the Fascism of the Trump/Pence Regime