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CounterPunch
January
4, 2003
How Do You Say 'Hoist By Your
Own Petard' in Korean?
or
This is No Chinese Fire Drill
by BEN TRIPP
Hey, George, you abysmal horse's ass-you got your
rogue state, now why won't you stand up and fight? Saudi terrorists
blow up the World Trade Center in mid-morning of 9/11/01 and
at 2:40 PM exactly, your brain (Donald 'Duck and Cover' Rumsfeld)
says "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H.
(Saddam Hussein) Go massive Sweep it all up. Things related and
not." You cretins were thirsting so bad for a piece of
Saddam you were willing to pervert and derail the most important
mission of your presidency--to hunt down Osama Bin Laden--in
order to go after the dictator that shined the red-ass at your
daddy. You diverted the might of our nation, you spent every
last nickel of our diplomatic currency and wrote a thousand IOU's
to get your war with Iraq on you even let the culprit of 9/11
get away. And then the unthinkable happened. A real
enemy came along. George, you silly fuckwit, allow me to introduce
North Korea.
A while back, you sucked Chinese butt
to get one of our spy planes back. You blinked first, and you
groveled and it worked. Seems you learned your lesson: you've
been extremely diffident with China ever since, and all our spy
planes now fly over American airspace where they belong, looking
for muzzle flashes out of the backs of cars. During your staring
contest with the Yellow Menace, Nixon was rolling over in his
grave, but more importantly, North Korea was watching. And I
get the feeling Kim Jong-il (who runs the joint) thought to his
inscrutable self, "that there George, he's a long streak
of paralyzed piss. I can do what I like." And after a
few aimless diplomatic slaps in his face by the US, he's pissed
off to boot. Meanwhile all eyes are bent on Iraq, and all of
our troops and materiel as well. Maybe this would be a good
time not to tweak Kim Jong-il's nads but hey, why not?
After all, we can take a corn-studded
dump on two fronts at once, even if, as our highest-ranking military
generals suggest (although Rumsfeld disagrees) we can't fight
a war on two fronts at once. So dump on Pyongyang we did, but
not the fuel oil and food aid those crazy commies were expecting.
It gets cold there in the winter, George. People starve and
freeze to death in North Korea, just like in Boston and Chicago
when the unemployment benefits run out at Christmas time. So
Kim Jong-il says something in Korean. Says it to you, George.
Hard to figure out exactly what he's saying because as you know
them Shovelheads don't talk English, but the Korean sounds like
this: "Fa Kyo". Come to think of it, maybe he's speaking
English after all.
And what do you have to say about it?
According to the closest thing to an Asian in the Bush cabinet,
high yellow Colin Powell, the situation with North Korea is "not
a crisis". They're just "playing with the fool's gold
of nuclear weapons". I don't think they're playing, George.
They just threw out the United Nations inspectors, George.
They reopened their nuclear plant and they're stoking up the
furnace, George. They say it's to provide heat to the North
Koreans, but given that those folks have the Bomb, and given
that this self-same nuclear plant is the one they use to make
the plutonium for said Bomb, George, don't you think maybe that
heat is intended for us?
I'm going to look at this situation the
way you do, George, in good old black and white. No shades of
gray in your world. For us or agin us, right? North Korea is
waaaaay agin us. So are you going to shuck and jive for this
Kim Jong-il? Are you really going to shake your head like a
sad but tolerant father while this fang-toothed baby eating devil
does the Macarena on international arms treaties? I thought
we were the only ones allowed to do that. Couldn't be a double
standard, could it, George? One set of rules for the nigh-powerless
little creep in Baghdad and another set of rules for the extremely
authentic, bull-necked threat in Pyongyang?
Maybe it's because North Korea ain't
got dick in the natural resources department. Maybe it's because
you're actually a coward who got caught with his drawers down,
and you're scared merdeless. You tell me. But I have this terrible
creeping feeling that you don't realize how weak and expedient
your international adventures are starting to look to the real
threats in this world. You think Bin Laden is afraid of America
now? Au contraire, he's high-fiving everybody he sees and handing
out cigars. You made his millennium, George. And if you don't
live up to your self-appointed world cowboy image in North Korea,
we're going to see an awful lot more of these crazy mercenaries
coming out of the woodwork. These days, I won't live or work
within five miles of anything there's a postcard of.
You put on the boots, George; do you
have the guts to walk the walk? It's your quagmire, and you
really ought to get out of office if you're not going to wade
through it. I can't help you there; my feet don't reach the
bottom so like most Americans I'm just treading water, trying
not to drown. But I'm going to pretend I'm a belligerent halfwit
like yourself, but that unlike you I have some consistency and
follow-through. What would I do? I'd recognize a terrible,
real danger that could secure my endangered ass a footnote in
the history books other than "made the Nixon administration
look good". I'd get our forces the fuck over to the Korean
Peninsula and take care of business, if that's what it takes;
march into North Korea with everything we've got and pull the
fuse, NOW. Why? Because North Korea is an authentic Axis of
Evil type place.
They were softening up and getting all
friendly for a while there, but you sure as shit took care of
that, and now they're fighting mad. They heard what you said
about the US making a first strike against its enemies, and they
heard you call the North Koreans enemies, back when we were looking
for someone to replace Osama Bin Laden. The North Koreans have
nukes, and they intend to make more, and they just threw the
inspectors out, like you said Saddam Hussein did, although he
didn't--we pulled the inspectors out of Iraq so we could
bomb the place with abandon-- North Korea really threw
the UN inspectors out. They really have the Weapons of
Mass Destruction. They really are the threat we claim
Iraq to be. I'd be responding to the North Korean threat with
everything I have if I was you. But thank the Lord Jesus, I
am not you.
So what are you going to do about it,
George? Let me guess. Nothing, because you can't. Our entire
military is massed in the wrong place around a straw man you
set up to distract the angry American people from the simple,
inescapable fact that you're the lowest-rent, dumbest, most ignorant,
big-money screw-the-public tax-and-spent fuckwad ever
to steal public office in this nation's history. At least Reagan
was elected. You are going to send your lily-livered chickenhawk
shills out to quell domestic dissent and spread the bullshit
while you gamely press on with this schoolyard bully routine
with Iraq. The media will follow your orders, because the same
handful of rich men that own you, own them. But there's no hiding
the facts, George. North Korea is the 500 pound gorilla in the
corner of the room, and it's thinking your neck looks mighty
like a banana. I'll tell you what, though. I believe the rest
of the world is going to pull our asses out of the fire on this
one. I believe the rest of the world still has intelligent diplomats
at its disposal, and some pragmatic thinkers, and some ability
to compromise on issues of mutual benefit. They'll work something
out while we're knocking Saddam's dick in the dirt.
I'll quote Colin Powell again, if only
because quoting Rumsfeld gives me shingles: North Korea "can't
feed its people, and they are investing in the wrong kind of
things." Gosh, George, that sounds just like a description
of North America. Look behind you: all those dim, jingoistic
good ole boys that voted for you, that voted your Congress in
and only by the narrowest of margins, George, it's no mandate--they're
losing their jobs. This Christmas was the worst in retail since
we started keeping records. The better part of a million Americans
just lost their unemployment benefits, and 100,000 are slated
to fall off the roll every week from here on in. The
stock market's got squitters and entire industries are folding
around your ears, and you can't hide that in the dust and smoke
of a desert campaign in Iraq. These chickens will come home
to roost on your head, and for that I can be patient, especially
as said chickens look more like vultures than poultry: schadenfreude
is enough to keep me going, that and the occasional crust of
bread. But we can't wait on the meltdown in North Korea. It
won't disappear the way unemployed Americans or Osama Bin Laden
will.
The last time we had this kind of trouble
it took president Clinton and ex-president Carter (talk about
your Axis of Evil, George) to put a lid on the situation. They
had to make all kinds of concessions, which got them mocked
at the time but it worked. Real Americans make concessions every
day, George. We pay the rent instead of the electric bill, or
we accept unfavorable refinance terms on the mortgage from the
bank because it's better than losing the house, or we take three
jobs (if we can find them) and we don't see our kids in daylight
hours. Those are concessions, and people make them every day
for teeny-tiny reasons, like six bucks an hour or three meals
a day. Surely you can make a few concessions yourself, if only
to avert World War Three?
Like maybe we back our military down
off Iraq, not because some peaceniks begged you to (although
we're right) but because we might have to throw some muscle at
Pyongyang, especially if they're talking about building more
nukes. To date all you can muster to stop them is Colin Powell
clucking his tongue at their childish antics. I think they might
need to see some sabers, clean out of the scabbards and skip
the rattle. Hell, I don't much like the next idea--I think you've
been too soft on them already, what with allowing those North
Korean Scud missiles to go to Yemen and so forth--but you could
even make some more concessions and maybe calm North Korea
down, what about that? Because if you're so goddamn tough, if
you're such a man, you can take it. You can lose a little face.
You did it for a single spy plane, now do it for the rest of
us. Just pretend Kim Jong-il is Chinese.
Ben Tripp
is a screenwriter, political satirist and cartoonist. He can
be reached at: credel@earthlink.net
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