Making sense article

"Their humanity is caught up in our humanity, as ours is caught up in theirs…when I dehumanize you, I inexorably

dehumanize myself…" Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Ubuntu

"You never really understand a person until you consider something from his point of view...til' you climb inside his skin

and walk around in it." Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird

As I prepare to travel to Pyongyang, I feel afraid. It’s not because of North Korea’s alleged nuclear weapons or its massive military. Daily in Albuquerque I travel past a base housing 3000 Weapons of Mass Destruction. I feel afraid because our country’s leadership has become “the bully on the block”- marching to the mantra “The West above the Rest…at any cost.” By declaring “you’re either with us or against us,” and attacking nations it considers “evil,” our leaders have forgotten the essence of what it means to be human.- to understand on a deep level that we are not separate from those who we choose to demonize.
Acknowledging our interdependence, a principle based both in physics and spirituality, is an essential element for forging a deep and lasting peace. It’s what Mandela understood when he said “the chains bind the oppressed and the oppressor alike, robbing both of their humanity.” What we do to others we do to ourselves. To have peace, our nation must connect with others, not disengage and isolate them. When we listen respectfully and deeply we come to understand why others feel resentment toward the U.S., we reject the idea that there are clear lines of good and evil, and open our minds and hearts to explore how our own actions are intrinsically linked to the roots of the conflict. As Alexsandar Solzhenitzn knew so well:

If it were all so simple,
If only there were evil people somewhere
insidiously committing evil deeds,
and it were necessary only to separate them
from the rest of us and destroy them.
But the line dividing good and evil
cuts through the heart of every human being
And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

The purpose of my trip to Korea north of the DMZ is to “develop an understanding of the conflict with the U.S. from a Korean perspective” and to “build bridges of peace.” I believe we can reframe how nations relate and abandon the cycles of violence that have plagued the past centuries. Through my work as a lawyer and mediator, I have witnessed that there are always at least two sides to a story - two truths if you will - dependent upon one’s angle of vision. Recognition of this reality enables parties to move from the blame game of “ you have a problem,” to the more connecting and mature point of seeing disputes as a shared problem in need of a collaborative resolution. We can never force another to genuinely change through threats. When we truly listen to the other side it leads to self-reflection and the opportunity for healing emerges. I’m drawn to the words of the Dalai Lama, that we deepen our connection to others and solve problems when we “understand and appreciate the background of people you are dealing with and be more open-minded and honest.”
Understanding the standoff from a North Korean perspective requires empathetic or compassionate listening, a trait not practiced regularly in Washington. This simple tool has been used for decades by parents, educators and counselors in healing conflict and increasing understanding. All religious and spiritual philosophies incorporate it as respecting others, even ‘to love your enemies.’ Applying it to the International arena reduces blame, judgment and resentment, while opening doors for dialogue, peace and connection. Clearly anything would be more productive than tossing nuclear threats back and forth like kids at recess.
. My intuition told me that the conflict on the Korean peninsula was not as simple as the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld Administration were stating. Their conduct had done little to build trust with We the People. Over the past year they have exploited terrorist warnings and illusory threats, fostered unreasonable fears held together with duct tape and duck tales, suppressed dissent, while masking their true motivations for these preemptive wars. Meanwhile, all we have been spoonfed about the crisis is that North Korea’s alleged nuclear actions are the result of an irrational madman dictator bent on world domination and terror. I knew in my heart, as have many others I suspect, we weren’t getting, as we say in New Mexico, “the whole enchilada.”
Thus began my journey to Pyongyang. Some people lament that we are powerless and getting involved with politics is so “negative.” But I decided that what is negative is turning my back and letting us be dragged further into what Wendell Berry calls “the hopeless paradox of making peace by making war.” The North Koreans have to see Americans who represent the millions in the U.S. who stand for peace and dialogue. I am going to North Korea to deeply listen and hold a space for peace.
From the outside looking in I’ve been able to immerse myself in books and articles about the North’s Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK). Several central questions emerge that have been continually overlooked by the media and the Bush administration.
• Why might North Korea resent or not trust the US?
• Why might North Korea believe they need nuclear weapons to defend itself?
• Who profits from keeping the Koreas unstable for more than 50 years?
It is through the answers to these questions that the standoff emerges as a complex web of relationships for which the US plays a substantial role. So let’s take a brief stroll in the shoes of history from a North Korean perspective.

You may ask yourself, well… how did I get here?
Talking Heads
Once in a Lifetime from Stop Making Sense

The year was 1905. A secret deal, known in North Korea as the “First Betrayal,” was signed between the United States and Japan that provided that Japan would not challenge U.S. control of the Philippines in exchange for allowing the Japanese Emperor to take over Korea. For nearly 40 years the Japanese Empire brutally colonized Korea, including exporting thousands of Koreans to serve as slave labor.
After World War II, the Soviets and its Korean sympathizers were moving South and appeared like they might come to control Korea. In Washington two U.S. officials huddled over a National Geographic map of Korea and drew a line in the sand dividing a country that had been unified for over 1300 years. The division was made without consulting any Koreans or anyone with any expertise in the region. The advance of Northern troops stopped as the U.S. brought reinforcements and Washington and Moscow appointed their respective governments to control each side of the divided peninsula. Families were forever separated on this fateful day and this divided peninsula would remain on the brink of war long after other walls fell and the Soviet Union was a distant memory.
When I began this journey, all I had learned about Korea came from a few pages in an American history book and from watching M.A.S.H re-runs. What I knew amounted to that there was a war between North Korean and Chinese troops on one side and the U.S., South Korea and some other U.N. troops on the other, that lasted from 1950 until a cease- fire armistice agreement was signed in 1953. What we didn’t study, as is the case in most wars, was the level of destruction and human suffering that resulted. We have monuments to the 36,000 U.S. soldiers who died, but there were more than 3.5 million victims of the war, resulting in one in ten Koreans being wounded or killed. The North also suffered years of US bombing that leveled nearly the entire Country. The U.S. commander halted the strikes near the end of the war because he said there was “nothing standing worthy of a name.” Can you imagine a twin towers attack in every neighborhood?
Despite such devastation the war fought to a standstill and no peace treaty was ever signed, making the countries technically still at war. At the time of the cease fire South Korea wanted to keep fighting and never signed the cease-fire agreement. For the past 50 years, the penciled line from the National Geographic Map, known as the 38th Parallel, and ironically called a “Demilitarized” Zone (DMZ) has been a border on the brink of war – caught up in the ambiguity of a conflict that has never been allowed closure. Understanding the depth of this tragedy, need we even ask “Why might the North Koreans resent the United States?”

“We’re going boom, boom, boom, and that’s the way we live,
In a great big boom, and that’s the way we live….”
Talking Heads - What a Day that Was
from Stop Making Sense

In the 1970’s the US Defense Secretary Schlesinger threatened the North with nuclear attack and began the infamous Team Spirit military exercises. In 1976, when two US soldiers were killed in a physical altercation with North Korean troops in the DMZ, Henry Kissinger declared “North Korean blood must be spilled” and meetings discussed exploding a nuclear weapon at sea near North Korea as a warning. Ironically, it had been the United States that first introduced nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula in 1953. At its peak in 1976 there were over 700 nuclear weapons in South Korea aimed at the North and other regional targets. These were not removed until 1991.
The Untied States has over the past few decades sent new troops into Korea each year, and regularly conducts full scale battle drills along the border that include “theatres” for the use of nuclear weapons. There are currently over 37,000 troops in North Korea on a constant state of alert. In 2003, a National Geographic reporter described US Apache helicopters with antitank missiles hovering over a village near the DMZ shooting targets with laser gear, while medics evacuated mock casualties under barbed wire. In military exercises additional ships still land from the seas and tanks roll up and down along the DMZ.
Is it any surprise that when the North Koreans hear that we want peace and have no plans to attack that our actions raise some doubts? Actions speak louder than words. If the real motive were a peaceful co-existence, why do we not model it and why for over 50 years, despite dozens of requests from the North , have we not taken swift action to normalize diplomatic relations and sign a peace treaty ending the state of war? I can hear my Motown roots croon
“ Something is happening and you don’t know what it is - Do you Mrs. Jones?”
While over the past twenty-five years meetings between the South and North have resulted in several commitments to end aggressive behavior toward one another, and North Korea joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement, as further disagreements between the countries regarding compliance arose, the response from the U.S. has usually been to threaten sanctions and resume high profile military exercises along the DMZ, often with nuclear capable equipment. This causes the North to react and label such exercises “acts of provocation” and a violation of agreements with the U.S. to refrain from making nuclear threats. Further punishment from Washington has been an angry refusal to meet and talk. Can you imagine our children behaving this way? Apparently the United States has never followed Winston Churchill’s hard gained advise that it’s “far better to talk, talk, talk, than to fight, fight, fight….” There’s an old saying “if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.” To the casual observer its as if the only tools in the U.S. creativity chest are weapons .
In 1994, U.S. – North Korea relations slipped closer to war, with the US military bringing in Patriot missiles, adding more troops, and moving for sanctions. Former President Jimmy Carter, when he learned that the US was not even talking to the North Korean leadership, boldly traveled to Pyongyang. Meeting with President Kim Il Sung, Carter secured an agreement to freeze the nuclear program in exchange for the U.S. agreeing to formal meetings and for the West to provide two Light Water Reactors to produce more power and replace the current nuclear reactor at Jongbyon that had weapons capabilities. It was an historic moment and an example of how direct talking and active listening can reduce tension and bring peace. Yet, some in the Clinton Administration jealously accused Carter of showboating and being unpatriotic by talking with enemy.
The relationship between the two countries ebbed and flowed over the remaining Clinton years, but the new millennium brought astonishing progress. I’ll never forget the sight of the Olympic teams from North and South Korea marching into the sports stadium in Sydney under a unified Peninsula flag. Later that year Secretary of State Albright held direct talks in Pyongyang and plans were being laid to have President Clinton visit just before he left office. The contested elections of 2000 dragged on, making Clinton’s trip at the end of the year impossible, and suddenly a President who had never even traveled abroad, dashed hopes for peace by riding into the White House like a gunslinger seeking a fight.
With the Bush Administration drawing lines in the sand across the planet, President Bush did nothing to establish trust and follow-up on diplomacy. When he declared to the world that North Korea was part of the “axis of evil,” we can only imagine the fear, shock and disappointment that the Koreans felt. Add to it the U.S. declaring its intent to fight pre-emptive wars, engage in regime changes, its abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and lifting decades old prohibitions against CIA political assassinations, and a targeted nation would have to start circling its wagons. In 2002, a new U.S. document from the Bush Administration entitled Nuclear Posture Review was leaked to the press calling for a “revitalized nuclear weapons complex” and development of “low yield” mini-nukes. Amidst such actions, President Bush, with a straight-face no less, attacked North Korea for having nuclear ambitions. I can hear Mr. Rogers asking “ Can you say ‘non-proliferation?’”
Such actions, when viewed from the shoes of Kim Jong Il, do little to build trust and demonstrate a desire for peace. Where do we think the Koreans learned the deadly game of nuclear deterrence, but in watching the U.S. for 50 years deal with the world. The current occupation of Iraq hasn’t put them at ease either. So when the U.S. gets righteous about North Korea possibly producing a nuclear weapon, it’s helpful to know this history to better understand why they believe they need such weapons to protect themselves. More importantly, we must ask ourselves how we can demand that the world de-escalate, without modeling it ourselves?
This is not to say that the North has not engaged in its own military build-up and had its share of military actions that have detoured peace progress in the past. This must be factored in, along with times during the 1980’s wherein some North Koreans engaged in sabotage and assassinations resulting in the death of South Koreans and other innocent people, and illegal kidnappings. State sponsored terrorism is to be condemned regardless of whose flag it is wrapped in. Yet, one country’s bomb may be as reprehensible as another country’s carpet bombing or napalm. No country is without its ghosts.
Who profits from keeping peace at bay in Korea? Certainly there are military people on all sides that have taken steps to thwart steps toward peace over the past 20 years. The Military-Industrial complex is big business. If by chance corporate interests are dominating the Bush administration, it is unlikely that there is much incentive to close down such a lucrative venture. Yet, we are faced with the government telling us there are no funds for schools, national healthcare and alike, meaning that “we the people” could clearly benefit from the savings. The Brookings Institute estimates that without the Korean military operation, the US could save 20-30 billion dollars a year. Think of what the hundreds of millions from the Iraq debacle could have done for our nation to make it healthier and stronger in spirit.
The American press, now largely owned by large corporations, is also playing its part in stirring up the march to war and the search for the ever-famous Weapons of Mass Destruction. Rather than discuss obstacles to peace, the media make allegations of nuclear weapons potential and chemical weapons. Missing are reports and debate about our massive stockpiles of such weapons, nor the fact that U.S. companies continue to profit from international arms sales to unsavory places. Yet, mention of chemicals or nuclear weapons in the hands of “evil” power during the Homeland Security Era lights up the sky with an orange alert and presents enough to scare the pants off of any American or Congressmen that might be told its urgent to once again have a little “regime change.” This has all too familiar a ring to me, so you can imagine what the North Koreans are feeling. I’m shaking in my empathetic boots!
Can we even believe what our government and the press tells us anymore? Intelligence, lately an oxymoron, leaves us scratching our heads in search of the truth. It is a sad day in a democracy when, knowing that the administration cried wolf, a soft euphemism for “lied,” about weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, we must question the veracity of our leaders on matters of war and peace.
To make matters worse, Former CIA director Robert Gates has called North Korea “without parallel,” the “toughest intelligence target in the world.” Former officials, including the U.S. Ambassador under Bush I, Donald Gregg, called them “the longest running intelligence failure in the world.” It was just ten years ago that the CIA publicized estimates regarding the down-time of the nuclear reactors in North Korea that they said would have allowed for time to make 1-2 Hiroshima bombs. This brought our nations close to war and it was many months later that the CIA had to admit that the weapons potential turned out to be erroneous, or in true speak “exaggerated,” and that the North’s assertions of being down a much shorter time for maintenance was likely more accurate.
In 1998 U.S. Intelligence again detected what they labeled a secret underground nuclear weapons complex. This allegation was leaked to the NY Times. After months of negotiations the North Koreans allowed the US to inspect and the State Department had to announce that the tunnels were not suitable for any reactor, reprocessing or other nuclear program. Yet, the allegation held up progress in any peace efforts under the Clinton Administration for nearly a year and spread fear to the Nation.
Are we today going to once again rush into conflict when we hear the magic words “Intelligence reports indicate…..” I pray not. The intelligent thing to do is nothing new , but includes “talk, talk, talk.”

“There’s a million ways to get things done. There’s a million ways to make things work out. Talking Heads – What a day that Was form Stop Making Sense

U.S. troops are now preparing to be realigned away from the DMZ, a move Pentagon officials admit are being made with the possibility of war in mind. As I head to North Korea, the administration has announced it will be holding ground interdiction exercises to seize ships it thinks may be carrying weapons – something that China has warned will increase tension, not prevent nuclear proliferation in Pyongyang. The Chinese point out that it is the U.S. policy toward North Korea that is obstructing a resolution of this conflict. They too urge dialogue, not the seizure of ships
All I am saying is “give peace a chance.” Let’s announce a peace treaty with North Korea and follow the example of the European Union, Canada, Australia and others, by establishing formal diplomatic relations. Talking from a point of threats, and the barrel of a gun, is an antiquated and ineffective method of resolving conflict. Are we not more creative than that? War and threats as an option is like “dumbing down” our human potential and power as a nation.
War is not the answer, nor is it even a sane option. For the past ten years even the U.S. military figures show that a war in Korea could lead to up to one million deaths, including 80-100,000 Americans and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, not to mention the nearly one trillion dollar impact on the region. Whoever believes that is acceptable “collateral damage” has simply stopped “making sense.”
As a civil rights lawyer I am often called upon to hear the justification of an employer and determine if it is cover for some other more insidious motivation. And frankly, the explanations for maintaining the standoff on the Korean peninsula smells pretty rotten. So what motivations exist to even continue with such sabor-rattling? It’s here where the Defense Planning Guides and papers coming out of the White House and Conservative Think Tanks tell a frightening story.
It appears there is a broader policy motive that isn’t being discussed. The Conservative Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), funded initially by John D. Rockerfeller, J.P. Morgan and others, has been the preeminent intermediary between big oil, high finance, corporations and the U.S. Government. The policies promulgated in its Journal of Foreign Affairs often become US government policy. We know Dick Cheney, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Henry Kissinger and others are members. In 1993 the CFR published a paper entitled the “Clash of Civilizations” that declared that the “real threat to the planet” was from Islamic culture and an Asian empire that would “have the resources to shape the world in non-western ways” thereby overwhelming Western civilization. The next conflict, the article claims, will be “between the West and the Rest.”
Herein lies the link between the current conflict in Iraq and the maintenance of instability on the Korean Pennisula. The Clash of Civilizations thesis means that we are morally justified to engage in preemptive war to preserve and secure world domination of western culture, values and, of course, capital. Such a concealed objective makes the indefinite War on Terrorism’s mantra - “we’re fighting to preserve our way of life that others want to tear down” – more understandable. Sounds like a sad rerun of “Crusades Revisited.”
The paper directly criticized North Korea for “opting out of participation in the Western-dominated global community.” The fear is that countries would choose to “modernize, but not to Westernize.” The article concludes that the West must maintain its military and economic power over these civilizations and “exploit conflicts” among the Islamic and Asian states. Thus, perpetuating conflict between North and South Korea, keeping the region unstable, while maintaining a powerful military in Asia, are more consistent with the CFR article rationale, than fears of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. But the administration is not letting there be any debate on its motives, labeling such action unpatriotic.
In 2000, another policy paper prepared specifically for Cheney & Rumsfeld, called for the U.S. to take military control of the Gulf region, calling our armed forces “the cavalry of the new American Frontier.” Somehow the notion of the 19th century cavalry sweeping across America doesn’t conjure up positive images based on building relationships or peace. It’s even scarier when you think that this proposal comes before the September 11th attack prior to the revelations that the stated justifications for the war in Iraq were suspect.
As early as 1992 , the first Bush administration’s Defense Planning Guide declared that the U.S. must dominate all militaries for all time, and that the U.S. needs the clearance to “go it alone.” A this time Colin Powell uttered the infamous line to Congress that: “I want to be the bully on the block.” Add to this the fear of Asian hegemony, especially in the economic realm, and we see that this show of force, this maintenance of 40,000 troop in Korea 50 years after the cease-fire, and the continual thwarting at efforts for Korean unification, may have a motivation beyond what they are telling the American public.
John Quincy Adams warned the nation in 1821 that “If America were ever tempted to become the dictator of the world, it would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit because what empire lavishes abroad it cannot spend on maintaining republican government at home.” How prophetic was Adams as we watch billions of dollars wither away on the battlefield, while schools, healthcare, unemployment and pain increases at home. This insatiable drive toward warfare as a means to save western civilization reminds me of the quote by Mahatma Gandhi, after seeing what the West had wrought in India and through two World Wars. Gandhi was asked by a reporter about what he thought of western “civilization.” He replied “ I think it would be a good idea.”
On this the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech, can’t we seize the opportunity to turn dreams into reality? The DMZ has beautiful wetlands from the five rivers crossing it and conservationists can envision the day when it is an international peace park, with ecosystem preserves and wildlife sanctuaries. Are these merely wide-eyed utopian hallucinations? Or can we face truth in the eye and see that war as an option needs to go the way of the dinosaurs and eight track tapes?
In South Africa I was present in Truth and Reconciliation hearings where perpetrators and victims of great atrocities would meet each other and listen to each other’s truth. Many would forgive the most vile crimes after they felt they had been heard and could place a human face on a complex conflict. I have seen the same results in restorative justice victim/perpetrator mediations and at the Navajo Peacemaker Courts. These experiences taught me that human beings have an innate desire and capacity to forgive. It is this deep knowing that keeps hope alive that even the U.S. and North Korea can forgive the past and forge a new relationship if we can awaken humanity in the hearts of our leaders. This is where the people must lead, and the leaders will follow.
But it takes understanding. It takes truth. And most importantly it takes an unequivocal declaration of Peace and non-aggression, not military threats and name-calling. The world is waiting for us to assume the responsibility that goes hand in hand with power – to model a new way to relate for the 21st century. To institute Ben Franklin’s vision that “America’s destiny is not power, but light.” The U.S. could bring the world together, but not through force, but by modeling humanity and leadership. Where is our creative spirit? There is enough for everyone in this world to be taken care of, if only the heart would open and see a new possibility.

Eric Sirotkin is one of five lawyers from the U.S. and Canada that are part of a National Lawyers Guild delegation invited to North Korea in October to build bridges for Peace and increase understanding.