For Immediate Release
Attention: News Editors, Political Writers, Assignment Desks,
Talk shows
Date: October 10, 2006
Contact: Jerry Goldberg – 313-319-0870 or http://www.stopthewarslate.org/davidsole.html
STATEMENT ON CRISIS IN KOREA FROM
DAVID SOLE, GREEN PARTY CANDIDATE FOR U.S. SENATE
Washington Created the Crisis; It Must
End It Stop War Threats; No Sanctions against
the DPRK! Respect Korean Sovereignty--Sign a
Peace Treaty Now!
The present crisis arises directly out of the implacable hostility of
the U.S. imperialist government to the socialist government of the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The DPRK has been trying for over 50 years to get Washington to end its
threats and provocations, normalize relations and sign a peace treaty
ending the Korean War. During that war, which ended in 1953 with a
cease-fire, U.S.-led forces killed 4 million Koreans and leveled the
North with saturation bombing.
Instead of moving toward peace and responding to the DPRK's numerous
proposals for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, the Bush
administration has branded the DPRK as part of an "axis of evil", has
put it on a "terrorist" list and targeted it for "regime change." The
DPRK is encircled by a naval armada of U.S. guided missile destroyers,
bomber and fighter squadrons, nuclear weapons and 30,000 U.S. troops in
South Korea. The Pentagon has repeatedly carried out menacing military
maneuvers directed at the DPRK.
Washington has not only refused to guarantee the safety of the DPRK but
has reserved the right to launch a "preemptive strike" against it and,
in its Nuclear Posture Review of 2002, declared its right to use
nuclear weapons against the DPRK.
The North Korean government has been branded "unpredictable" and
therefore "dangerous" by the propagandists for war in the capitalist
media. This is nonsense. Given all the unrelenting U.S. military
threats--plus the fact that the U.S. government has only recently
overthrown the government of Iraq by unilateral, unprovoked military
force--the DPRK's efforts to develop an effective deterrent against
military, and possibly nuclear, attack are entirely predictable,
totally defensible and a matter of national survival.
Washington has created the present crisis. The people of the United
States and the world must demand that Washington end the crisis by
abandoning its threats and provocations, dropping its demand for
sanctions, and sitting down and negotiating the normalization of
relations with the DPRK, including the signing of a peace treaty to end
the more than 50 years of U.S. imperialist aggression in the region.