North Korea –
As Trump Threatens, the Nation Still Struggles with
America’s Lethal Legacy
By Felicity
Arbuthnot
October 22,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- Throughout
the world, on any given day, a man, woman or child
is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed or
‘disappeared’ … More often than not, the United
States shares the blame.” (Amnesty International,
1996.)
As the US
threatens to decimate North Korea again – if not the
entire planet, given
Donald Trump’s
chillingly casual approach to the use of nuclear
weapons – an article (1) has revealed the criminal
legacy remaining from America’s last attack, ending
sixty four years ago, on a country smaller than
Mississippi. (North Korea is a landmass of 120,540
square kilometers, Mississippi is 125,443 square
kilometers.)
“Experts say it will take a hundred years to
clean up all of the unexploded ordnance”, says
Major Jong Il
Hyon: “but I think it will take much
longer.”
Major Jong
has lost five colleagues in the still ongoing
ordnance disposal work and “carries a lighter one
gave him before he died. He also bears a scar on his
left cheek from a bomb disposal mission gone wrong.”
In Hamhung,
the country’s second largest city three hundred and
seventy mortar rounds were found in an elementary
school playground in October last year, with a
rusted, lethal round discovered nearby in February
this year.
“Bombs,
mortars and pieces of live ammunition” are still
found in “thousands.” “Virtually all of it is
American”, but “over a dozen” countries “fought on
the US side and every now and then their bombs will
turn up as well.”
In the
region this lethal legacy is mirrored in: “Vietnam,
Cambodia, Laos and even Japan”, with a “huge amount
of unexploded ordnance” needed to be disposed of by
those courageous enough to risk their lives, daily,
doing it.
The scale
of the regional horror is near incomprehensible. For
example:
“From
1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped more than two
million tons of ordnance on Laos during 580,000
bombing missions – equal to a planeload of bombs
every eight minutes, twenty four hours a day,
for nine years …” (2.)
Laos, 1983. An
intensive bombing campaign, coupled with artillery
battles on land, has left the landscape in some
areas of Laos filled with craters. Photo: Titus
Peachey
It is
thought that possibly a third of the bombs did not
explode and over twenty thousand people have been
killed by unexploded ordnance since.
Moreover:
“Over
270 million cluster bombs were dropped on Laos
during the Vietnam War (210 million more bombs
than were dropped on Iraq in 1991, 1998 and 2003
combined); up to 80 million did not detonate.”
Less than
1% of these munitions have been destroyed, with
commensurate deaths and maimings ongoing.
The US is
undoubtedly the “Leader of the Free World” in one
thing: killing. It is also clearly the undisputed
king of overkill and the most murderous of legacies,
ensuring its actions will never be forgotten or
indeed forgiven by the populations affected. Which
of course, is why North Korea is trying to ensure it
is powerfully enough armed to deter another attack.
Whatever it has or has not achieved in this respect,
compared to America’s planet threatening nuclear
arsenal, it is utterly insignificant, for all
Washington’s undiplomatic, bombastic bluster.
North Korean
missile launch on March 6, 2017.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
statement regarding North Korea that: “(Trump) has
made it clear to me to continue our diplomatic
efforts – which we are. As I’ve told others, those
diplomatic efforts will continue until the first
bomb drops”, is hardly likely to encourage anything
but frantic efforts at armed deterrence – whilst
still clearing the poisoned legacy from over half a
century ago.
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Major
Jong’s “bomb squad is one of nine … one for each
province. His unit alone handled 2,900 left over
explosives – including bombs, mortars and live
artillery shells, last year.” This year: “they have
already disposed of about 1,200.”
North Korea
has said that 400,000 bombs were dropped on the
capitol, Pyongyang: “roughly one bomb for every
resident at the time.” 32,500 tons of napalm was
also dropped on the country.
Some bombs
are not easily recognizable to the untrained eye,
Major Jong pointed out, thus an eleven year old lost
his fingers investigating an item he had found.
There are a “surprising variety.” He described one
as a “butterfly bomb” which had “wing like
attachments to disperse small ‘bomblets’ over a
wider area.” It was “devised by the Nazis in World
War 11. The US revised its design and used them in
North Korea”, points out Associated Press.
Aging bombs
become even more unstable, rust erodes detonators,
thus the slightest movement causes them to explode.
“I’m
sure that my daughter’s generation will also
suffer from this problem”, said Major Jong: “I
want the world to know.”
Historian
Charles Armstrong
of Columbia University points out that the
saturation bombing:
“marked
something of a turning point for the United
States and was followed by the use of an even
heavier version during the Vietnam war.”
He also
makes the point, ignored by the blinkered and
apparently supremely ignorant new incumbent in the
White House that:
“To
this day the North Korean Government and media
point to the American bombing as a war crime and
a major justification for the continued
mobilization of the North Korean people – as
well as the development of nuclear weapons – in
defence against nuclear attacks.”
Has anyone
on Capitol Hill heard of “cause and effect”?
Notes
2.
http://legaciesofwar.org/about-laos/secret-war-laos/
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