It's not Iraq the U.S. needs to worry about
By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor TORONTO SUN
NEW YORK --August 11, 2002August 11, 2002
Name a "rogue nation" - part of President George Bush's "axis of evil" - run by a megalomaniac dictator who threatens his neighbours and the U.S. with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
If you said Iraq, wrong. The correct answer: North Korea.
So is Washington planning to invade North Korea and overthrow Kim Jong-il's Stalinist regime? Absolutely not. While the war-infatuated Bush administration insists full-scale invasion of Iraq is the only way to deal with wicked Saddam Hussein, its policy toward far more dangerous North Korea is radically different.
Last Wednesday, a glitzy ceremony was held in Kumho, North Korea, attended by 100 American, Korean and Japanese officials, complete with fireworks, flowery speeches and a brass band, to lay the foundation of two nuclear power plants. They are being given to North Korea by a U.S.-led consortium as a part of a $4.6-billion US package signed in 1994 to get the North to end its nuclear weapons program and not invade South Korea. Rather than fight a major war, Bill Clinton's White House decided to bribe North Korea to behave with cash, food, oil and nuclear plants. The Bush administration has reaffirmed this policy.
The CIA estimates North Korea has at least two or three nuclear devices and intermediate-range missiles capable of delivering nuclear or biological warheads to all of Asia, Hawaii and Alaska. North Korea is expected to have missiles capable of striking the American mainland within three years. Like Iraq, North Korea refuses to admit UN nuclear inspectors. But this is apparently acceptable to the U.S.
North Korea also continues to strengthen its already huge, 1.1-million-man army. Newly fielded batteries of long-range artillery, rockets and tactical missiles - mainly improved Scuds - can deliver a storm of nuclear, conventional, chemical, and biological weapons onto Seoul, all positions of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division, and U.S. air bases farther south. North Korea has repeatedly threatened to "burn" Seoul and "annihilate" the 37,000 American troops in South Korea. In addition, its 100,000-man commando force, the world's largest, is tasked with attacking U.S. bases in South Korea, Japan, Okinawa and even Guam.
Recent naval clashes with South Korea clearly show that while occasionally talking peace as a means of getting handouts of more cash, oil and food to feed its starving people, North Korea remains a dangerous, hostile, totally unpredictable nation led by a regime every bit as sinister and brutal as Saddam's, perhaps even more so.
Iraq threatens no one, save its own people. Iraq has fewer than 100,000 effective troops and an inoperative air force. Only 40% of its antiquated tanks and guns are operational. Its armed forces cannot move, fight, see, or communicate effectively. Iraq has perhaps five or so inaccurate Scud missiles hidden away and no nuclear weapons.
As for Iraq's much ballyhooed "weapons of mass destruction" - mustard and nerve gas, anthrax, and botulism - nearly all were destroyed during seven years of intrusive UN inspections. Whatever small amounts were hidden away by Iraq have became chemically inert, according to former UN inspector Scott Ritter, who points out the shelf life of chemical and biological weapons is only between three and five years.
By contrast, North Korea actively, directly threatens U.S. troops and - one day soon - the U.S. mainland. So why doesn't Bush go after North Korea, which is really a danger to Americans, instead of Iraq?
Two reasons. First, unlike Iraq, North Korea can fight back. The Pentagon estimates a major war with the North would cost 250,000 American casualties. War against Iraq would be a cakewalk by comparison. U.S. military strategy calls for wars only against small nations that cannot defend themselves. And North Korea has no oil.
Second, there is no U.S. domestic lobby for war against North Korea. The American media has downplayed the threat of North Korea while exaggerating that of Iraq. America's highly influential Israel lobby and its partisans in the Pentagon, the vice president's office, and media are straining every sinew to press the U.S. to attack Iraq. Last week, Vice President Dick Cheney said that even a return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq will not deter an invasion. From Israel's friends in the Pentagon came threats that Saudi Arabia might be next.
But if Washington is content to bribe truly menacing North Korea to be quiescent, why not do the same with Saddam Hussein, who was, after all, a former close U.S. ally? If Saddam was America's friend and regional bullyboy up to 1991, why not again? Iraq was even flirting with Israel in the late 1980s. Saddam is no fool and would leap at a diplomatic, face-saving way of averting invasion and his own demise.
Bribery is always 90% cheaper than war. Bush's proposed crusade against Iraq will cost a minimum $120 billion US. It will sharply worsen the growing deficits Bush created, and trigger inflation. Why risk American troops in a trumped-up, unnecessary war the rest of the world will denounce as naked aggression and imperialism, when all Baghdad wants is to be pampered into goodness like "evil" North Korea? |
