Removing North Korea from list is wrong

Michael Ragland
Published: July 24, 2008

Why has North Korea been removed from the list of terror nations? The official U.S. State Department answer has been because they have “ended” their nuclear program; blowing up the cooling tower.

North Korea is a totalitarian government which starves its people, tortures, imprisons or kills attempted defectors, engages in illegal drug trafficking (especially to Japan) and has a obviously dismal human
rights record. Its people have been indoctrinated into worshipping their leader. There are many states which belong on a terror state list but aren’t, like Zimbabwe, Somalia, Sudan, and Democratic
Republic of Congo. Obviously there is Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, too, the latter a military dictatorship where potential candidate for president Bhutto was assasinated.

It is unfortunate that “removal from list of terror nations” is often political and doesn’t reflect reality on the ground. If it is in our “national security” interest, then a state may be taken off the U.S.
government terror list.

In terms of “national security,” humanitarian concerns are low on the totem pole (did the U.S. State Department condemn China in its recent treatment of Tibet?) compared to resources.

Take Rwanda for example. Did they have gobs of precious oil?

Even then it is debatable that the world would have cared to prevent the genocide unless it disrupted supplies to the world market.

Going into the recent past , one can say the Allies ended World War II and the Holocaust, but nobody tried to seriously stop the Holocaust.

Jewish people were denied entry into most other countries and particularly by President Franklin Roosevelt. The result was that between 4.5 and 6 million European Jews perished. Food Shipments were
not allowed either in Occupied Europe.

Hopefully, in time one will see there is a critical intersection between national security and humanitarian concerns. So far the world hasn’t recognized it or cares.

Michael Ragland
Triangle