Editor’s note: This op-ed by former ABC News reporter Barrie Dunsmore first appeared in the Sunday Rutland Herald and Times Argus.
Christmas Day was my last column of the year. Surely a time for an uplifting message – one inspired by hope and human kindness? At the risk of qualifying for the Scrooge-of-the-Year award, I have to confess, that’s not what I do. My father would call me a crepe hanger (for the black crepe that was once a feature of many funerals). It’s not a role I particularly relish, but considering my skill set, it’s the work I’m best equipped to perform. And so, the question to begin this final essay of the year is: How would you like to see this country go to war again — say with North Korea or Iran ?
The United States has just ended its unnecessary war in Iraq — one of the longest and most expensive in its history. And America is slowly beginning to decrease its military presence in the even longer and very costly conflict in Afghanistan. So why would any sane person want to start another war?
Let me first say, that I am not questioning anyone’s sanity. But I am certainly challenging the judgments of those whose public statements in recent days and weeks could lead to such wars, if they were to pursue their stated policies while sitting in the Oval Office. I’m talking of course about those who are seeking the Republican Party’s nomination for president. With the Iowa caucuses — the first electoral test of the 2012 presidential nominating process just nine days away — it is not too early to start paying closer attention to what these presidential hopefuls say when it comes to war and peace.
This past week North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il died of a heart attack at the age of 69. While he’d had a stroke a few years ago he seemed to have recovered and his sudden death was a surprise to everyone — mostly because North Korea is a paranoid police state sealed off from the rest of the world. Policy makers have since been highly concerned about the transition of power because Kim Jong Il’s designated successor is his third son Kim Jong-un — an unknown 20-something said to have attended school in Switzerland, who speaks some English and likes basketball. We know his father recently made him a four-star general. We don’t know how the real generals feel about that — or if they will ultimately accept Kim Jong-un as their leader. So given that uncertainty – and especially considering the fact that North Korea now has nuclear weapons — the wise response of President Barak Obama has been cautious. This is not the time to be issuing threats that might provoke a young, inexperienced leader into trying to prove his manhood — by igniting a war with South Korea for instance.
However as Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wrote this past week, “All of this was lost on (former Mass. Gov. Mitt) Romney, who came out guns blazing with what sounded like a call for regime change.” After a blistering attack on the dead leader, in which he called him “a ruthless tyrant (who) recklessly pursued nuclear weapons,” Romney went on, “The North Korean people are suffering through a long and brutal national nightmare. I hope the death of Kim Jong Il hastens its end.” (I guess he meant the nightmare but it could easily be interpreted as meaning an end to the regime itself.)
Newt Gingrich, the other current leading candidate most likely to win the Republican presidential nomination, has a lengthy record of bellicose statements about North Korea. In 2009 Gingrich said the United States should use military force to stop the North Koreans from testing a long range missile. The message would be, said Newt, “We’re not going to accept a North Korean missile launch, period.” Yet, to have taken such significant, overt, military action would most likely have prompted the North Koreans to take revenge against South Korea ’s capital Seoul, which is only 35 miles from their shared border.
Both Gingrich and Romney have used similar threatening language regarding Iran’s nuclear program. They both have declared that as president they would not tolerate Iran becoming a nuclear power. There may come a time, perhaps even in the next year, when the only way to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon will be to go to war. That would be a war with another Muslim country — which would almost certainly spread to numerous nations of the Middle East with heavy human and economic costs (including an astronomical price for a barrel of oil.)
Ironically, it was former President George W. Bush, on whose watch North Korea officially became a nuclear power, who actually decided America’s interests would not best be served by a war with North Korea — a war which would immediately involve key U.S. ally South Korea and could even engulf other Asian powers like China and Russia. Bush apparently concluded that the threat of nuclear annihilation is still a very powerful deterrent. If it worked on Stalin and Mao, two of history’s greatest mass murderers, it will work on paranoid dictators or fanatic ayatollahs.
Going to war with either North Korea or Iran (after Iraq, the other two points on Bush’s infamous “axis of evil”) could make that war in Iraq really seem by comparison, to be the “cakewalk” the neo-conservatives predicted it would be. So it is very important to remember that many of the people who promised Iraq would be a cakewalk are the very ones now eager to use force to effectively achieve regime change in Tehran and/or Pyongyang. For the most part, they are the neo-cons like John Bolton (GWB’s United Nations Ambassador and UN hater), whom Gingrich has said he would make his secretary of state. The only thing that would make me more nervous than that would be having Gingrich as president.
On that happy note, enjoy your holidays and best wishes for 2012 – which we all may very well need.
