Don't worry - the anti-war movement has kept the North Koreans "out of harm's way"
I know Harry has already linked to this piece by Gary Younge once, but it is so revealing of a certain mindset that it's worth looking at again.
I like Gary Younge's writing sometimes - his book about visiting the key sites of the US civil rights movement as a black Briton forty years later is really good - but he makes a horrifying slip here. He says:
Over the past two years the left has built a strong enough base to support those who chose to challenge American hegemony.
True, none of this has saved Iraqi lives. But with ratings for Bush and Blair plummeting, it may keep Iranians, North Koreans or whoever else they are considering bombing out of harm's way.
"Out of harm's way"? In a horrific Stalinist state that even Noam Chomsky describes as "the worst regime in the world"? Leaving North Koreans under that is something to be proud of? In fact, I would happily wager that the poor people of North Korea would welcome a US invasion, as we now know definitively that the Iraqis did. (Check out the opinion polls - 66% say the current difficulties are well worth it to get rid of Sddam). I know the situation is complicated by North Korea's acquisition of nuclear weapons, but to imply that the civilians within North Korea actually benefit from the "solidarity" of leaving them to be starved and gulaged is morally depraved.
What Gary means, of course, is that not the North Koreans are out of harm's way - he is a smart man - but that they are out of America's way. It is only US-backed tyranny that excites his (and too much of the anti-war left's) anger.
You can read my take on North Korea here. It's a long way from being the best thing I've ever written, and it is probably far too beligerent. But I'd far rather be too tough on tyranny than simply blankly ignore it so long as America's finger-prints aren't on the cattle-prod.
No, this isn't about saying that America is terrific and the last great hope of man on earth. Its foreign policy has done more harm than good in the last fifty years. But for crying out loud - an American liberation is, if it can be done without triggering a nuclear war, surely better than a regime that systematically starves its own people and - to quote Amnesty - "denies the population any freedom of thought at all."
