26 April 2017

President Trump and the North Korean "Crisis"

North Korea is a disaster and an embarrassment to the world community. The fact that such a terrible, dictatorial regime is still in place after so many years - where millions live without dignity, or at the least, basic human rights - should leave everyone at the United Nations, (where they pretend to care about human rights), hiding their collective heads in shame.

Now, all of a sudden, there's a crisis. President Trump has decided to call their bluff. Instead of ignoring the long-range missile tests, he's decided to send a nuclear submarine to South Korea to give a strong show of support for our ally. A show of support that we and the world haven't seen for years.

News stations talk of a "crisis". Our generation's "Cuban missile crisis" - who will blink first? But what's the true crisis here? That we will have World War 3 on our hands? No. Rather, the crisis should center on the lack of action on behalf of the North Korean people. A people enslaved and slaughtered on the capricious whims of the government - the Democratic People's Republic of Korea - the name itself is a cruel joke on those who live there.

This week we spent time memorializing the Jewish Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide, both exterminations of millions of people - the mass murders that happened while the World watched and sat on their hands. Instead of gnashing our teeth and wringing our hands over what will happen next on the Korean peninsula - while the situation is certainly different, we must wonder how things might have turned out better for the Jews and Armenians if the world powers at the time would have shown some backbone and perhaps a show of force on their behalf. And perhaps, we will learn from history this time...