{"id":97251,"date":"2017-08-21T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2017-08-21T11:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=97251"},"modified":"2017-08-20T17:24:14","modified_gmt":"2017-08-20T16:24:14","slug":"we-burned-down-every-town-in-north-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/08\/we-burned-down-every-town-in-north-korea\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe Burned Down Every Town in North Korea\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u201cWe went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another\u2026 Over a period of three years or so, we killed off, what, 20 percent of the population?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 General Curtis LeMay, in\u00a0\u201cStrategic Air Warfare,\u201d by Richard H. Kohn<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

20 Aug 2017 – <\/em>The US public wants to know why North Korea is so paranoid, militarily hostile and boastful. And why do the leaders in the capital city Pyongyang point their fingers at the US every time they test another rocket or bomb? Sixty-five years after the US burned down every town in North Korea, the US military is now simultaneously bombing or rocketing seven different non-nuclear countries. The US conducts military exercises with South Korea off the North\u2019s coastline twice a year.<\/p>\n

The US regularly tests Minuteman-3 long-range nuclear missiles \u00be from Vandenberg Air Base in California \u00be that can reach and obliterate Pyongyang. Several presidential administrations have called North Korea \u201cevil,\u201d a \u201cstate sponsor of terrorism,\u201d and \u201cthreatening.\u201d US military officials have called North Korea\u2019s tiny, backward, nearly failed state the \u201cprinciple threat\u201d to the US security. North Korea may have reason to worry.<\/p>\n

North Korea\u2019s rocket tests mostly fail but are nevertheless called \u201cprovocative\u201d and \u201cdestabilizing\u201d by the State Dept., the Council of Foreign Relations, and the White House. This is regardless of which party is in power. Bill Clinton said in 1994: \u201cIf North Korea ever used a nuclear weapon, it would no longer continue to exist.\u201d Likewise today, Defense Secretary Jim \u201cMad Dog\u201d Mattis used similarly bombastic language discussing North Korea August 8. John Walcott reported for Reuters that Mattis said the North must stop any action that would \u201clead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consider living memory<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Robert Neer\u2019s 2013 book \u201cNapalm,\u201d <\/em>the author reports that General Lemay wrote, \u201cWe burned down just about every city in North and South Korea \u00a0both<\/em> \u2026 we killed off over a million civilian Koreans\u2026\u201d Eighth Army chemical officer Donald Bode is quoted as saying, on an \u201caverage good day\u201d \u2026 pilots in the Korean War \u201cdropped 70,000 gallons of napalm: 45,000 from the U.S. Air Force, 10,000-20,000 by its navy, and 4,000-5,000 by marines\u201d \u00be marines who nicknamed the burning jellied gasoline \u201ccooking oil.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neer found that a total of 32,357 tons of napalm were used on Korea, \u201cabout double that dropped on Japan in 1945.\u201d More bombs were dropped on Korea than in the whole of the Pacific theater during World War II \u00be 635,000 tons, versus 503,000 tons. \u201cPyongyang, a city of half a million people before 1950, was said to have had only two buildings left intact,\u201d Neer wrote. This is still living memory in North Korea.<\/p>\n

Howard Zinn\u2019s \u201cA People\u2019s History of the United States\u201d says, \u201cPerhaps 2 million Koreans, North and South, were killed in the Korean war, all in the name of opposing \u2018the rule of force.\u2019\u201d Bruce Coming\u2019s 2010 history \u201cThe Korean War\u201d says, \u201cof more than 4 million casualties \u2026 at least 2 million were civilians. \u2026 Estimated North Korean casualties numbered 2 million including about 1 million civilians… An estimated 900,000 Chinese soldiers lost their lives in combat.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Truman fired Gen. MacArthur in May 1951, the former supreme commander testified to Congress, \u201cThe war in Korea has already almost destroyed that nation of 20 million people. I have never seen such devastation. I have seen, I guess, as much blood and disaster as any living man, and it just curdled my stomach, the last time I was there. After I looked at that wreckage and those thousands of women and children \u2026 I vomited.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dem\u2019s take finger off the button (for a minute)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two democratic presidential hopefuls said in 2007 that they\u2019d take the threat of nuclear attack \u201coff the table,\u201d hinting at their discomfort with the idea of the Bomb\u2019s deliberate mass destruction. In April 2006, then New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was asked in a TV interview about her position toward Iran. She said, \u201cI have said publicly no option should be off the table, but I would certainly take nuclear weapons off the table. This [Bush] administration has been very willing to talk about using nuclear weapons in a way we haven\u2019t seen since the dawn of the nuclear age. I think that\u2019s a terrible mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

On August 2, 2007, Barak Obama said to the AP, \u201cI think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance,\u201d pausing before he added, \u201cinvolving civilians,\u201d The New York Times reported. Obama quickly retracted the statement saying, \u201cLet me scratch that,\u201d but his intent was loud and clear \u00be and needs repeating: The long-standing U.S. threat to \u201ckeep all options open,\u201d that is its willingness to use nuclear weapons against human beings, must be abolished. H-bombs cannot be used without indiscriminately killing of hundreds of thousands if not millions of civilians, creating deadly radioactive fallout that drifts into non-conflict areas, and causing long-term environmental damage, all in violation of the laws of war, the UN Charter, and the Geneva Conventions.<\/p>\n

Clinton\u2019s and Obama\u2019s public put-downs of nuclear weapons attacks are both rare and bold in their implications for the nuclear weapons establishment. More such talk should be encouraged.<\/p>\n

At least a dozen former nuclear war planners \u2014 Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, Melvin Laird, Generals George Butler, Charles Horner\u00a0 Andrew Goodpaster, and Admirals Stansfield Turner, Noel Gayler, and Hyman Rickover, among others \u2014 have denounced nuclear weapons and called for their elimination.<\/p>\n

What is it exactly to threaten to destroy an entire country\u2019s people? Is it terrorism? Trump\u2019s fire and fury \u201cthe likes of which the world has never seen\u201d would have to be beyond the half million dead in the US Civil War; 18 million overall deaths in World War I and 50 to 80 million dead in World War II; 3 million dead Vietnamese and at least 2 million dead Koreans. As usual, Mr. Trump cannot be taken seriously, or he is frighteningly unhinged.<\/p>\n

Even, the late Paul Nitze, Reagan White House presidential adviser, a rightwing Cold War hawk, and a founder of the anti-Soviet Committee on the Present Danger, wrote in the 1999, \u201cI can think of no circumstances under which it would be wise for the United States to use nuclear weapons, even in retaliation for their prior use against us.\u201d<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>John LaForge, syndicated by <\/em>PeaceVoice<\/em><\/a>, is Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and is co-editor with Arianne Peterson <\/em>of Nuclear Heartland, Revised: A Guide to the 450 Land-Based Missiles of the United States.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

20 Aug 2017 – The US public wants to know why North Korean leaders point their fingers at the US every time they test another rocket or bomb. \u201cWe went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another\u2026 Over a period of three years or so, we killed off, what, 20 percent of the population?\u201d
\n\u2014 General Curtis LeMay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}