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I had to stop by the wax museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al Qaeda Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been had, you've been took, you've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as a fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing they army, we killing them.
We be on CNN like say our name, been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys on the line.
I've got Tim Shorrock.
He wrote Spies for a Hire about the contracting in the intelligence agencies in the 21st century here.
And he writes for The Nation magazine and he's great on Korea.
Welcome to the show.
How you doing, Tim?
Thank you.
Well, what a lousy partisan you are.
Didn't you get your marching orders?
You write for a liberal magazine.
Therefore, you're supposed to find a way to hate Trump and to mock him and ridicule him for being stupid enough to think that he ought to meet with the North Koreans because only stupid people think that everybody knows that.
Yeah.
How outrageous of me, right?
I said one good thing about Trump.
Oh, my God.
I thought it was a good idea that he would meet with Kim Jong Un.
But no, no, no.
That's that's a heresy in this world.
Yeah.
Well, so, OK, I'll let's skip Rachel Maddow and go straight to something that seemed at least comes from, you know, a credible source, somebody who's worthy of some respect, worth the benefit of taking seriously.
Anyway, Robert Kelly, he helped debunk a lot of great lies about a lot of horrible lies about Iran in a great way.
A former IAEA guy.
And he says, well, this is just foolish.
And it's given away the whole store right up front.
And, you know, maybe in the hands of some expert negotiator, but not in the hands of Donald Trump.
After all, everything's at stake.
And if Trump's not willing to actually give up major concessions to get major concessions and the whole thing's going to fall apart and it's just going to be a big stupid mess.
And because it is Donald Trump we're talking about.
And so what about that?
Well, you know, I've seen Robert Kelly's tweets on this in the last couple of days, and I think he's I think he's wrong.
For one thing, you know, I think even though this is this announcement is, you know, sudden and take took a lot of people by surprise and there hasn't been any kind of, you know, open negotiation between U.S. and North Korea.
I think there have been conversations and there have been, you know, back and forth communications, particularly with, you know, there, you know, over these last few months, even while at the height of tensions, there's there's this group of former U.S. officials and some connected with the U.N. who meet occasionally with the North Korean government and these sort of they call them track two negotiations.
And in those negotiations, you know, just, you know, North Koreans have all made some offers and U.S. side has come back and said, well, that probably wouldn't be acceptable.
And so they've had some preliminary discussions on this.
And, you know, basically, you know, about nine months ago, it became clear that North Korea might be, you know, would be willing to take, you know, freeze their nuclear testing and freeze their missile testing in exchange for a freeze of of the U.S.
South Korean military exercises and which which they see as a major threat to them.
And and what we got, you know, last night, basically, it looks like to me that that basic framework of a freeze for a freeze basically is the basis of this agreement under which, you know, Trump is going to go meet with them and meet with Kim Jong Un.
And and it's but it's a freeze of the, you know, North Korea's testing of of its nukes and its missiles is going to be frozen.
And they have accepted a partial freeze or a downgrading of the U.S.U.S. South Korean military exercises where they're still going to take place, but not with these not with like nuclear weapons and not with, you know, teams that that are set up to assassinate the North Korean leadership, which is what they've used in these past exercises.
So, you know, I think that was a pretty major concession from the North Koreans.
And so, you know, they've obviously been telling the South Koreans, Moon Jae-in government, you know, what they would like to see come out of this.
And that's been that was conveyed to Trump, you know.
So, you know, I think some groundwork has been laid.
And I think, you know, what the media here has been missing entirely is the very, very important role that the South Korean president Moon Jae-in played in this.
I mean, you know, he was instrumental.
Without him, this would not have happened.
And this has been the core of his presidency since he became president last May.
And, you know, he set out to, you know, he wanted to bring back what he called, you know, the sunshine policy of his liberal predecessors in South Korea, which was to develop relations with reduced tensions through engagement and dialogue and exchanges of, you know, economic exchanges, political sports, et cetera.
And so, you know, he made very clear that was his intention from the beginning.
And, you know, finally, in January 1st, North Korea responded to his overtures and said, you know, they would send this, you know, high ranking delegation to the Olympics, which they did.
And out of that, you know, the negotiations happened during the Olympics.
And then after at the end of the Olympics, you know, another high level delegation came from North to Seoul, and they laid the groundwork for, you know, trying to lay the groundwork for a summit between Moon and Kim Jong-un.
But Moon Jae-in really wanted to have, wanted North Korea to make some concessions and to agree to talk to the U.S. on phasing out its, you know, eventually ending its nuclear program.
So, you know, I think people are missing the fact that some major concessions were made on the North Korean side.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, so, well, we can get back to to, you know, the actual what's at stake in the negotiations and all that.
But it sure seems like in right wing media, the narrative is, of course, support the president on this, but in a way where they're basically saying, see, it's all our threats and it's Donald Trump talking tough and threatening to kill them all.
That finally, you know, he played good, he played bad cop to Moon's good cop.
And that's what allowed this to happen.
And I guess it seems like maybe that's somewhat true.
Right.
But then there's a terrible lesson being learned there that what we need to do always is speak very loudly and carry a very big stick to get what we want.
Well, I think in terms of the military threats and the actual actions they took, I mean, you got to remember, you know, they were flying these B-1B bombers into Korean airspace and, you know, Korean skies last year.
And one time they actually flew some B-1Bs, you know, up past the northern limit line that goes into North Korea, you know, that goes up the coast of North Korea, which the U.S. had never done, you know, for, you know, almost 30 years.
And so, you know, the North Koreans have seen these flights and these threats.
They've heard these threats from Donald Trump.
And that's why they proceeded very rapidly to, you know, to get their missile capability together and to, you know, develop the capacity to shoot a nuclear weapon.
So, you know, I think that, you know, the military pressure actually, you know, pushed the North Koreans to develop their systems more.
But the other part of the Trump policy, of course, was sanctions.
And I think without a doubt, sanctions have, you know, started to crimp the North Korean economy.
And, you know, Kim Jong-un has made clear that, you know, once he completes what he calls the state nuclear force, he wanted to put some efforts into, you know, putting some efforts into economic development in North Korea.
And so, you know, the sanctions are, you know, clearly hurting there.
So, you know, maybe the sanctions did, you know, bring him partly to the negotiating table.
But but I think really it was the diplomacy of South Korea and the South Korean government treating the North Korean government with respect and listening and hearing them out and, you know, really developing a plan for how to move forward that that really made this possible.
All right.
But now, so what about that argument, though, that really the stakes are too high, that ultimately the Americans have already said you're going to have to give up your missiles and your nukes and that those are just too tall orders to really imagine?
I mean, I guess I should say that at least twice the North Koreans, I think one time outright issued a statement and the second time it's hearsay by way of the South Koreans, but still credible, that they actually offered that maybe they would even negotiate away their possession of nuclear weapons.
But then again, that sounds pretty unbelievable when you look at the incentives, Iraq, Libya, that they have to maintain their nuclear weapons.
So what do you think?
Well, you know, for a long time, for years, actually, the North Korean position has been they will negotiate with the U.S. on nuclear denuclearization and anything else.
But on the condition that the U.S. end its hostile policy, and they use this term hostile policy over and over and over again, by hostile policy, they mean U.S. nuclear threats against them.
They mean these massive war exercises that South Korea and the United States carry out twice a year.
And they mean economic sanctions, which have really been in place since 1953, you know, since the end of the Korean War.
So, you know, they want the U.S., they want to normalize relations with the United States.
They want to have, you know, normal ties with the U.S. and end the state of enmity.
That's what their goal is.
And so I think, you know, like by insisting for months now, I mean, for years, actually, the U.S. has said, you know, only really enter into negotiations if they agree first to denuclearize.
And that was like saying you first have to surrender and then we'll talk.
And that didn't work.
And so I think, you know, the long term goal of Moon Jae-in in South Korea is eventual denuclearization.
But there has to be a peace process in place.
And, you know, relations have to get back to a normal state of relations and out of the state of war before that can happen.
So I think if we look at it like, you know, OK, long range denuclearization in Korea, but let's set up the steps to build a peace process so there can be an end to the U.S. hostile policy.
And you know damn well the U.S. hostile policy is very strong.
I mean, talk to, you know, it's like people talk in very light terms about, you know, destroying and annihilating North Korea.
You know, too bad if, you know, if it takes a meeting like with Trump to end it, to end that hostility, then that's what it takes.
I mean, it's good.
I think, you know, that's what's going on.
Well, you know, I said from the beginning, not that I like to say that I said from the beginning all the time, but yeah, I did, that this is exactly what he should do is he should go from the moment he's inaugurated, just go straight to Pyongyang and just be like, hey, I'm coming.
Air Force One's coming.
I mean, it's not like you're going to shoot it down, right?
I'm landing at your airport and I'm going to shake hands and we're going to have dinner and we're going to be friends.
And that's it.
The Cold War is over.
We're going to sign a peace treaty and we're going to drop all our sanctions and all our threats.
And yeah, we'd really like it if you would scale back your missiles and nukes.
But we're not even demanding that because it's a whole new day.
And because he's a right wing real estate tycoon from Manhattan type character, he could get away with that.
And then he could go from Pyongyang straight to Tehran and he could go from there back to Beijing and then over to Moscow and he could just say, that's it.
We don't forget dominance and all of this crap.
We're just making peace.
We don't care.
We're dropping all our threats.
We're dropping all our sanctions.
And so what do you need nukes for?
Right.
Well, I think actually, you know, the Korean War ended in an armistice.
It's never been there's never been a peace treaty and there has to be a peace treaty that, you know, that war needs to be brought to an end.
And I think that is a key goal of the of the North Koreans.
And I think South Korea would like that as well.
You know, that war was a terrible war.
And, you know, of course, North Korea remembers it vividly and it's sort of part of their national character now remembering what the U.S. did to them during the Korean War.
And so, you know, that, you know, bringing up signing a peace treaty would be, you know, a huge thing.
And that's to me, that's the key thing that needs to be done.
And I hope that's what they get to.
Yeah, I mean, it seems like well, look, the people who are criticizing him, the, you know, national security liberals who are criticizing him are saying that, well, geez, this should only be step five because you got to tease all these concessions out.
And I mean, how big of a deal are you really going to make you?
They're saying basically that he's going to get rolled.
He's going to end up giving away a lot so that he looks good at his big meeting when, in fact, the North Koreans won't have to give up a lot, something like that.
And and yet it seems like also, well, it seems like, you know, maybe I don't know about Trump, but some of his advisers would have thought of that.
And that is it asking too much, Tim, to believe that?
Yeah, they know that.
And that's why they're prepared to make some severe concessions in order to get some and that that they want only a big grand bargain here and not some little thing.
That's why they're sending the president himself.
He's going to make an offer these guys can't refuse and they're going to work it out then.
Or is that just I think I think, you know, the problem is, you know, we don't, you know, like, for example, you know, like the guy in the White House that's really been pushing a preemptive attack on North Korea, the so-called bloody nose strategy where they think North Korea wouldn't retaliate, is H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser.
And, you know, he's been the he's been the uber hawk within the Trump administration, you know, and he has been, you know, on one side and then the other side pushing for diplomacy as Secretary of Defense Mattis and Secretary of State Tillerson, who've been stressing the diplomatic strategy.
And now it looks like, you know, Mattis is behind trying to get McMaster pushed out.
McMaster looks like he's going to be leaving soon.
The question is going to replace him.
The other day, you know, Trump had a meeting with John Bolton.
If he if he appoints John Bolton to be the national security adviser, it's all over.
I mean, Bolton is a is, you know, he's like would be the worst thing that could possibly happen to any kind of peace process in Korea because he doesn't believe in it.
He believes North Korea should be annihilated.
Well, you know, I saw one of the CNN ladies last night saying that McMaster was for this and that that, oh, I guess the South Korean.
Am I right?
I think the way she said it was that the South Korean national security adviser in his statement specifically thanked McMaster for his support on this.
And well, yeah, he did.
Maybe that was him trying to save his job was the way that they analyzed it.
But I think they're wrong about that.
Those people on CNN, they know nothing.
Yeah, I mean, you know, but I mean, whether he supported it or not is the only real point before minutes before the South Koreans walked out there last night at about 710 p.m.
You know, like Gloria Borger's on CNN snipping away, going like, oh, you know, I've talked to my sources and it's for sure, you know, Trump's not going to make any trip there anytime soon.
And if I saw that five minutes later, you know, they announced that Trump is going there in May.
You know, so like, OK, maybe Gloria Borger, you should get some better sources or just, you know, stop.
I think it was the other one.
I think it was.
I think it was.
You're right.
But but, you know, yeah, they said, you know, yeah, of course, McMaster is still there.
So that's who they have to meet with.
But, you know, they went out of their way to thank Trump.
I think it's kind of, you know, diplomatic diplomacy.
But they know Trump likes to be, you know, thanked and applauded and all this stuff.
Yeah.
So I think, you know, the South Korean side, you know, understands the psychology of Trump and certainly Kim Jong Un does.
So he's saying, well, you know, here's this guy who talks about making deals and so on.
Let's make a deal.
So, I mean, it's possible that's going to happen.
But I still think that.
So, you know, I don't think Bolton's going to be named to the National Security Advisor because that would that would he would not be in favor of this kind of thing at all.
So my feeling is that he's not going to be named and it's going to be somebody else who's more amenable to diplomacy.
And the other question is, you know, who will who will actually handle the negotiations?
The guy who has been negotiating for the U.S., Joseph Yun, who was the ambassador for North Korean issues, you know, is this like today's his last day, I guess.
He quit and he quit in part because he was just so frustrated with it, with the situation.
But, you know, that stayed on a couple more weeks.
That's right.
But, you know, apparently, you know, there's talk of appointing, you know, a special envoy to sort of handle these talks.
And, you know, that's how it was done during the Clinton administration.
You know that when Clinton, you know, there was this agreement under Clinton where they did freeze their nuclear program.
This is before they even had a bomb.
But they froze it for 12 years.
They froze the development of plutonium into bombs for 12 years.
And and Secretary of Defense at the time was Bill Perry.
He helped negotiate that 94 deal.
But then later, you know, five years later, he was he was came out of retirement to negotiate with North Korea over its over its missiles.
And those those, you know, by almost, you know, 2000, just before Bush was elected, you know, Clinton was very close to an agreement with North Korea on ending their missile program.
And basically they were at that time they were ready to exchange their they were ready to trade their their their weapons program, you know, for a normal relation with the United States.
And and, you know, Perry was the guy who was who was very key on that.
I wrote a article about him and the role he played for the nation a couple of months ago.
But it's got to be somebody like that who's had experience with them in the past and, you know, knows their negotiating style.
You know, one thing about North Korea is their foreign policy infrastructure is, you know, pretty stays around.
And, you know, their foreign minister has been there for, you know, 25, 30 years.
And there's a lot of people at the foreign minister level and deputy foreign minister that have been in their positions for a long time and that have had a lot of contact, a lot of communications and even talks with with, you know, U.S. diplomats and negotiators.
So there is, you know, kind of a history of negotiation.
And there's even some personal relationships between these negotiators that could be revived.
So, you know, I think, you know, if it's I mean, it's a huge if, but I think this is I mean, I think I'm optimistic because I really think that none of this would have happened if Kim, if Moon Jae-in government, Moon Jae-in himself hadn't got some assurances from North Korea that, you know, they're serious about, you know, the offers that they've made because he's putting a lot on the line.
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Well, of course, you're not addressing the most important question here, Tim, which is how can we recruit some Hollywood celebrities to say on TV that they really like what Donald Trump is doing in negotiating here?
Because that's the kind of reinforcement he really needs right now.
I guess so.
Well, you know, the liberals are wringing their hands and the conservatives don't know what to do.
I mean, you know, you watch I've been like even even as you know, when these negotiations were going on, when the North Korean delegation was in in South Korea for the Olympics, you know, all the same people were pooh poohing that and saying, oh, nothing's going to come of it.
You know, reporters like Richard Angle from NBC were parachuted into South Korea to show how tenuous the situation is.
These people, they they're just they're just been so wrong.
You know, they've been so wrong on Korea for so long.
It's amazing that they they're I mean, they're they're still out there pumping away this disinformation.
You listen to these people on CNN and MSNBC talk about the history of U.S.-North Korea diplomacy.
It's just like one lie after the other.
I mean, there's not even there's no truth to what they what they say.
They'll say, oh, yeah, we signed agreements with North Korea, but they broke it the next day.
Not true.
The U.S. has screwed up agreements by itself, failed to come through.
And and, you know, the history is that, you know, both sides have broken agreements.
Right.
Well, I mean, in fact, John Schwartz even showed and this is one of the more outrageous ones on the scale, I think, where The Washington Post quotes the North Korean whichever minister saying that we will never negotiate with the United States, end quote.
But then the rest of the sentence was, as long as they keep threatening us, as long as that was the headline, as long as they keep the hostile policy.
No, they do this again.
They do this over and over again.
Like amazing.
They just they'll say, yeah, North Korea have put out many statements like that, saying we will not negotiate away our nuclear weapons capability unless the U.S. drops its hostile policy.
So the U.S. press always drops that last line about the hostile policy and just says, look, see, they won't negotiate.
I mean, the absolute, you know, the simpletons that report on Korea, it's really kind of sad.
It's an enormous disservice to the to the to the American people to have such people with such, you know, no knowledge whatsoever of history of the role the U.S. has played in Korea.
What I find really laughable is that it's often pitched as like, you know, the U.S. is some kind of, you know, innocent bystander in Korea.
You know, we're just somehow the North Koreans just hate us.
And, you know, we just don't understand why they have this animosity toward us.
You know, they don't even they don't even look at the history of the Korean War or what's happened since then.
The fact that, you know, it was the U.S. first introduced nuclear weapons into the Korean peninsula.
The U.S. had actually nuclear weapons, hundreds and hundreds of tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea until until 1991, when George H.W. Bush, you know, pulled him out as kind of as a gesture he made around the world, pulling U.S. tactical nukes out of a lot of countries.
But, you know, the North Koreans have still faced the threat of American nuclear weapons of on the strategic bombers that are in in Okinawa and in Guam, as well as the U.S.
7th Fleet, which is in Japan.
These aircraft carriers and submarines that carry nuclear weapons.
So, you know, they've had nuclear weapons pointed at them for decades.
And that's that's part of what they mean by ending the period, the hostile policy.
So, you know, I think it's worth mentioning here, although almost barely, but that's kind of my point that North Korea is a totalitarian society.
Right.
I mean, some estimates say that like two thirds of the population are in the military, this kind of thing.
It's a completely militarized garrison state with no freedom whatsoever.
But yet the point really is, though, is that that doesn't have anything to do with anything, that the way Washington, D.C. talks about it, the same way they do with Saddam Hussein or when they talk about Gaddafi or Iran when it's their turn, they say, look, the measure of how bad these men are to their own people, just like David Koresh, however bad to their own people they are, that's how irrational they are and how unable to speak with them we are, because, you know, as the saying goes, we would legitimize them by talking with them.
And yet we would gain nothing because they're so evil that that equals they're irrational, whether it's, you know, for this, that or the other reason.
That's certainly the message when it comes to the Koreans.
But so maybe that's true, right?
Like you would kind of have to be a psychopath to run a garrison state like North Korea.
So maybe these guys are too unstable to deal with, Tim.
I don't think so.
I think it's, I mean, you know, it's an authoritarian society.
There's no doubt about it.
Totalitarian state.
You know, there's I mean, they have this, you know, system of of putting people in prison camps that are, you know, run against the political grain.
And so, you know, there there is, you know, these camps all over North Korea.
I still think as a percentage of the population, the U.S. has more people in prison than in North Korea.
You know, so but, you know, human rights and that whole issue, you know, the U.S. uses it, you know, when it works for it.
And, you know, for years the U.S. supported, I mean, for decades in South Korea, that was one of the worst surveillance and torture states in the world.
Under Syngman Rhee, then Park Chung-hee, then Chun Doo-hwan, you know, finally the South Korean people stood up and kicked out, you know, their military authoritarian governments in the late 1980s, really with no help from the U.S.
They did it on their own.
But all that time, the U.S. didn't give a rat's ass about about, you know, the denial of human rights in South Korea.
And so, you know, you have to, you know, you have to take deal with countries as they are.
North Korea is the way it is.
But, you know, if we believe that there's a threat and if there's a way to mitigate that threat by having negotiations and working out a peace agreement, then by all means, you know, do it.
I mean, you know, and then I think the changes will come, will be up to the Korean people.
I mean, I think, you know, you end the state of war and that that's it.
That's right.
There is a huge improvement in human rights in general.
And I think, you know, it's just sort of like, you know, I compare it to the, you know, to the whole situation with Northern Ireland and the UK, you know, during the during 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, you know, like there was terrible human rights violations in Northern Ireland.
You know, the Irish Republican Army was, you know, blowing things up and, you know, killing people and assassinations and vice versa from the British, you know.
But but it was a state of war.
And and, you know, they negotiated, they negotiated an end to that war.
And and those kinds of violations, you know, dropped, you know, after once they got peace, the whole situation changed.
And I think the situation could change dramatically in the Korean Peninsula if there was a permanent peace.
Yeah, you know, it's funny the way it seems like it should go without saying right that whenever you whenever the talking head on TV is acting like America has been backed into a corner by a tiny, helpless, little poverty stricken state like North Korea, that you could tell that there's an agenda behind that, or at least just a loss of touch with the real reality of the situation where we actually have nothing to lose other than maybe, you know, the ability to extort our friends, the South Koreans and the Japanese into needing protection from their North Korean enemy.
We have nothing to lose.
But, you know, you know, who's going to lose is the because of North Korea, missile defense has, you know, been a huge developed to a huge extent here in the US.
And so, like, you know, who's going to lose if there's if you end that threat from North Korea, you're not going to have the need for all this missile defense.
And, you know, that that's what Raytheon doesn't want.
Lockheed Martin doesn't want, you know, I think I think that the that the keeping North Korea alive as a military threat, you know, is something that also keeps the military industrial complex alive, too.
And so it's so I think, you know, this is going to run against a lot of interests, you know, here here as well.
Yep.
And in fact, Gareth Porter's recent piece just a few months ago at Truthout talked about how his two major points is, first of all, I think it's the best retelling that I've ever read of the step by step nature of what all the Bush, the first Bush Jr.administration did to really force the North Koreans out of the deal.
They really drop kicked him right out the door, basically, and forced them to make nuclear weapons to as much as they could.
And then also on that second most important point, why?
And it was because of Dick Cheney and all of his men and their connections to these firms who would rather have a nuclear threat so that they can sell their bogus systems that don't even work to try to shoot the nukes down if the one day ever comes, because that's just what's in their selfish interests at the expense of the rest of humanity.
Right.
I mean, during the during the end of the Clinton administration, there was this big missile defense study group that was chaired by Donald Rumsfeld.
Right.
And they came out at the end of that around 1998, I guess it was, you know, with the findings that, you know, the rogue nations, I think that's when the term really became in vogue, rogue nations, you know, North Korea and Iran are developing missile systems that we have to develop our missile defense against.
And then, you know, Clinton came along and almost signed an agreement ending their missile program.
And of course, this was, you know, Rumsfeld was one of the people who was against the Clinton agreements from the very beginning.
Rumsfeld and Cheney and good old John Bolton came in and their mission was to undo, you know, this this these these agreements that they called appeasement.
And, you know, I think a lot of the blame for this has to fall at the feet of the Bush administration and those those neocons.
But then, you know, Obama came along and Obama made the situation worse.
Obama never even he said when he was going to run, he would talk to the North Korean leader, but he never did.
And he they just took up this policy of, you know, they thought that North Korea was just going to somehow collapse of its own weight and the problem would go away that way.
And they're all they're also concentrating on, you know, building up U.S. forces in the Pacific, the so-called, you know, Pacific pivot, Asia pivot that was under under Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
And, you know, so Obama really made things worse.
And he started a whole program of, you know, cyber warfare against North Korea and trying to disrupt their missile program, you know, through through cyber attacks.
And of course, that stiffened the North Korean resolve as well.
So, you know, I think I think one of the reasons liberals are so upset is because, you know, because of the fact that, you know, Obama, this was a huge failure by the Obama administration and they don't like, you know, Trump coming in and getting any kind of credit for for doing something different or that might be even lead to a piece that Obama didn't do.
Yeah.
But meanwhile, they'll cheer for him when he bombs Assad in Syria and say, yeah, if only Obama had done that more.
Right.
Right.
I mean, this is really incredible militaristic streak among among liberals.
And this, you know, and Korea, of course, is the symbol of Cold War liberalism.
You know, Phil Oaks had a great song about it.
Right.
Love me, love me, love me.
I'm a liberal.
And when it comes to times like Korea, there's no one more red, white and blue.
You know, this is a symbol of American containment of communism and a fight against communism.
And and they just they don't see really Korea as any kind of independent country.
They see South Korea as just sort of under the thumb of the U.S. and North Korea is this evil regime that needs to be destroyed.
And they don't see Korea as a complex country.
You know, they have no concept of the fact that, you know, millions of people in South Korea have families in North Korea that they've been cut off from for years and years and decades.
And that that it's, you know, it's a country that was united for five thousand years until the U.S. divided it, you know, by looking at a National Geographic map and finding a good line that would make a good division.
And, you know, 1945 and, you know, this was imposed from the outside.
The U.S. and the Soviet Union went along with that.
So, you know, I think the fact that the Koreas are doing this by themselves has really shocked a lot of people in Washington and they're used to the U.S., you know, having its way with the world and especially with a country like Korea, South Korea.
And that's just not happening anymore.
And they're like literally losing it because, you know, they just can't it doesn't fit into their into their field of vision at all.
Yeah.
Thanks very much for your time, Tim.
Appreciate it.
All right.
Thank you.
All right, you guys.
That is Tim Shorrock at The Nation magazine.
Spies for Hire.
The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing is his book, and you can follow him on Twitter at Timothy S.
And you know me, I'm Scott Horton dot org, Antiwar dot com, Libertarian Institute dot org, YouTube dot com slash Scott Horton Show.
What I leave out?
I don't know.
Twitter dot com slash Scott Horton Show.
Thanks.
