Does North Korea Need Nukes to Deter US Aggression?

"According to US journalist Blaine Harden...

"Over a period of three years or so, we killed off -- what -- 20 percent of the population," Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed 'everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.' After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops...

"You can glimpse both the humanitarian and political consequences in an alarmed diplomatic cable that North Korea's foreign minister sent to the United Nations... in January 1951:

"On January 3 at 10:30 AM an armada of 82 flying fortresses loosed their death-dealing load on the city of Pyongyang 'Hundreds of tons of bombs and incendiary compound were simultaneously dropped throughout the city, causing annihilating fires, the transatlantic barbarians bombed the city with delayed-action high-explosive bombs which exploded at intervals for a whole day making it impossible for the people to come out onto the streets. The entire city has now been burning, enveloped in flames, for two days. By the second day, 7,812 civilians houses had been burnt down. The Americans were well aware that there were no military targets left in Pyongyang.'

"The number of inhabitants of Pyongyang killed by bomb splinters, burnt alive and suffocated by smoke is incalculable...Some 50,000 inhabitants remain in the city which before the war had a population of 500,000." ("Americans have forgotten what we did to North Korea," Vox World)

Get the picture? When it became clear that the US was not going to win the war, they decided to teach "those rotten Commies" a lesson they'd never forget. They reduced the entire North to smoldering rubble condemning the people to decades of starvation and poverty. That's how Washington fights its wars: "Kill 'em all and let God sort it out."

This is why the North is building nukes instead making concessions; it's because Washington is bent on either victory or annihilation.

So what does North Korea want from the United States?

The North wants what it's always wanted. It wants the US to stop its regime change operations, honor its obligations under the 1994 Agreed Framework, and sign a non-aggression pact. That's all they want, an end to the constant hectoring, lecturing and interference. Is that too much to ask? Here's how Jimmy Carter summed it up in a Washington Post op-ed (November 24, 2010):

"Pyongyang has sent a consistent message that during direct talks with the United States, it is ready to conclude an agreement to end its nuclear programs, put them all under IAEA inspection and conclude a permanent peace treaty to replace the 'temporary' cease-fire of 1953. We should consider responding to this offer. The unfortunate alternative is for North Koreans to take whatever actions they consider necessary to defend themselves from what they claim to fear most: a military attack supported by the United States, along with efforts to change the political regime." ("North Korea's consistent message to the U.S.," President Jimmy Carter, Washington Post)

There it is in black and white. The US can end the conflict today by just meeting its obligations under the terms of the Agreed Framework and by agreeing that it will not attack North Korea in the future. The path to nuclear disarmament has never been easier, but the chances of Obama taking that road are slim at best.