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Media, Make History of Korea Clear! Barry Farber There are jokes doctors tell other doctors, lawyers tell other lawyers, soldiers tell other soldiers, and candidates tell other candidates. Here's a joke political handlers tell other political handlers. A candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio was facing off against his opponent in a TV studio with a live audience in Columbus, Ohio. This was long before illegal aliens became a big issue, but it was still an issue and illegals were unpopular. The candidate had a long and solid record of opposing illegal immigration. During the debate, however, he made no mention of his stand against illegal immigration while his opponent scored point after point about the hard-working newcomers who sought nothing but their place in the American Dream the way all of our own fathers and grandfathers did, etc. His handler was certain the candidate was preparing a dramatic crescendo denouncing illegal immigration at the end of the debate, but no; it ended without his having said one word about his well-documented opposition to illegal immigration. After the debate his handler went nuts. "Your opponent got away scot-free!" he railed. "He put himself on the ropes with all that 'American Dream' malarkey and you let him go. You didn't say pea-turkey about illegal immigration, your strongest issue. Are you brain dead? Why not?" "Oh," said the candidate, "I made all that very clear last night in Cleveland." You may have to be a political handler to slap your thigh and laugh, but you don't have to be one to get the joke. Whether through ignorance or bias, mass media let a lot of vital information slide on grounds that they made it all very clear in Cleveland last night. In other words, "We did a great job on all that at the time and we expect everybody to remember."
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It occurred to me around the 1980s that people, particularly younger people, who lashed out against Israeli occupation of Arab lands had no clue to the history, no idea why Israel was occupying those lands. I gently asked a few of them if they could give me the historical lead-up to the Israeli occupation, and none could. To them it was as if "In six days God made Heaven and earth. On the seventh day He rested. And on the eighth day Israeli swooped in and occupied Arab lands. And stayed there ever since!" Lost – completely lost – was any awareness that five Arab armies tried to throttle the infant Israel in its cradle in 1948 and in two major wars afterward. They failed. America was attacked by Japan and declared war upon by Germany. America won. When you're attacked and you win, you don't say to your attacker, "Nice try. Here's your land back. Better luck next time." You occupy that land until you have a government you can safely hand the country back to. America occupied Germany and Japan for a long time after World War II. America returned control to those who built a democratic and prosperous Germany and Japan. Israel would love to be able to do the same and has tried with Camp Davids and Oslos and come up with nothing much better than a Hezbollah in the north and a Hamas in the south. Why are those who are so articulate to speak of Israeli occupation of Arab lands so tongue-tied when it comes to explaining that history? Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is being targeted ferociously now for shamelessly (or shamefully) prostrating herself before North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il during the Clinton administration's effort to engineer North Korea's good behavior by continually giving the Dear Leader nuclear reactors and nuclear know-how in a classic liberal lunge to show them how good we are and they will surely change their ways. Apparently Madeleine Albright brought Kim Jong Il a basketball signed by Michael Jordan and presented it to him in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital.
Okay, theoretically North Korea could have responded according to the liberal playbook and said, "Wow! You've shamed us into realizing what brutes we are. We're now going to quit pursuing the nuclear weapon and study tutorials from Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson on how we can turn our totalitarian communist hell-hole of North Korea into a democracy!" If North Korea had responded in word and deed that way, then Albright's basketball diplomacy would have ranked as high as President Nixon s ping-pong diplomacy that opened a new era between America and Communist China. Anybody who's ever been in a bad marriage will understand where North Korea wanted Madeleine Albright to shove the basketball signed by Michael Jordan. The real guffaw was provided by former U.N. ambassador and Clinton's special envoy to North Korea Bill Richardson, now the governor of New Mexico. When North Korea triggered its nuclear or whatever explosive in October of 2006 he was called to task on TV by questioners who doubted the effectiveness of the Clinton approach. Richardson replied, "The Clinton approach was successful for eight years!" Would someone please remind Gov. Richardson that the Titanic was successful almost all the way from England to America? The Madeleine Albright remark that should be lifted out of the ashcan of Clinton's North Korea policy and repeated is her line to Kim Jong Il that "The bitterness is behind us!" That doesn't sound like a comment likely to provoke anger, but it does. It's one of those Clintonian impersonalizations (Mistakes were made!) that flee into the passive mood to deflect blame. "The bitterness is behind us" suggests that the peace-loving people of North Korea and America were somehow engulfed together in a cloud of bitterness that blinded our eyes, choked our lungs, and spoiled our relationship. That cloud descended out of nowhere and ruined our relationship. Now, however, that cloud has mercifully blown away and the bitterness is behind us! That's about all the casual listener will get from the media, and that is a commodity common wherever bulls congregate. John F. Kennedy once said, "Sometimes party loyalty expects too much." Sometimes diplomacy expects too much, too; but Madeleine Albright paid it nonetheless. In late June of 1950 Dear Leader's father, Great Leader Kim Il Sung, hauled off and invaded South Korea with massive armed force supported by the Soviet Union and Communist China. They took the South Korean capital, Seoul, immediately and swept unopposed through the country. A gutsy high-school dropout who was president of the United States, Harry Truman, who looks better and better every year in America's rear-view mirror, ordered American troops from Japan to go defend South Korea. The Korean War lasted from June 1950 until right now; a truce in August 1953 only ended the fighting. Why don't the media make that clear? It's as if the media are giving us a cultivated amnesia, a deliberate blackout of whatever history makes their favorite players look good and their unfavored players look bad. Today, South Korea is a thriving democracy and North Korea is fighting for last place in world standing against Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. (It's amazing, but satellite pictures of the Korean peninsula show South Korea all lit up at night while North Korea is completely dark.) Please, no more suggestions that we running dogs of the Wall Street 'oligarchy of atomic' maniacally oppose communist North Korea because that trigger word "communist" still sends us to the ramparts with a broken bourbon bottle. We oppose North Korea because of its brutal unconcern with the welfare of its own people and its wanton and monumentally murderous aggression against South Korea in our lifetime. Bitterness may well be behind Madeleine Albright. It is not yet behind me and those who served with me in the military during the Korean War, which cost 35,000 American lives due to nothing but wanton, blatant, inexcusable North Korean aggression. Moreover, unlike the once-upon-a-time evil of Germany and Japan, today's North Korea is the selfsame regime that launched the aggression in 1950. Every Jew knows the liturgical mandate to teach the holy precepts diligently unto thy children and post them on the doorposts of thy house and upon thy gates. Please, media, let one and all know that there are good and proper reasons for the Israeli occupation of Arab lands and good and proper reasons for bitterness toward the aggressor state of North Korea. It's not enough to make it clear in 1948, 1967, and 1973 in the case of Israel and 1950 in the case of Korea. You've got to do better than make it clear last night in Cleveland!
Editor's note:
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