Opinion:Why doesn’t President Obama take risks for peace with North Korea?

President Obama has constantly urged Israel to take risks for peace with its Arab neighbors. Despite the murderous rhetoric coming from the entire PA, from Abbas on down; despite never-ending murderous rock and rocket attacks by PA Arabs against Israeli civilians; despite repeated public refusals to recognize Israel’s right to live as a Jewish State of any size, with any borders, President Obama has repeatedly urged Israel to continuously take more risks for peace. That is why I find it strange that in President’s management of the cycle of violence between the U.S. and North Korea, when President Obama has the chance to demonstrate to Israel the wisdom of taking risks for peace, he does not choose to do so.

North Korea has repeatedly complained about feeling threatened by massive joint South Korean-American military exercises on its borders. Indeed, as the Oxford-based Asian expert Dan Glazemen has been quoted as saying: “Every year we have these massive provocations of joint U.S. and South Korean war games exercises right at the borders of North Korea. This year the provocations were stepped up to actually simulate a nuclear missile attack on North Korea. B2 bombers were used for the first time along with B52s and F22 bombers. So there is a military provocation from the U.S. North Korea feels rightly threatened” (http://rt.com/op-edge/us-wants-new-korean-war-402/ ).

Yet instead of putting himself in the shoes of his adversaries (as the President recommended during his recent speech to Israeli students), President Obama has sent more warships into the area, deployed a missile-defense battery in the regional American military base in Guam, and sent nuclear capable B-2 bombers over the Korean peninsula. Those are aggressive, provocative American responses to North Korea’s acts of self defense. Such actions by President Obama display no sensitivity to the North Korean narrative of who is to blame for the escalating cycle of tensions in the region. And they certainly do not demonstrate any willingness of the President to take risks for peace.

In many ways, North Korea demonstrates a much smaller threat to America than the PA does to Israel. For example, the PA’s people have murdered thousands of Israelis in the last thirteen years, while North Korea has not harmed a single American citizen in over half a century. If it is a good idea for Israel to take risks for peace with their adversary, why is it not a good idea for America to take risks for its much less murderous North Korean adversary?

Why shouldn’t the United States withdraw all its hundreds of thousands of military personnel from the Pacific? Their presence only provokes North Korea to take what it sees as necessary measures of self-defense, which could ultimately lead to a nuclear war. Why shouldn’t the United States then offer North Korea sovereignty over our abandoned military bases in the region, like Guam? And if that proves insufficient to convince North Korea of America’s peaceful intentions, why not offer North Korea sovereignty over Texas, California and New Mexico, which are the regions of the Continental U.S. that are closest to North Korea and from which North Korea feels most threatened? After all, those western states are only occupied territory seized by America from Mexico in an unjustified war of aggression under the extremist-expansionist President James K. Polk. Isn’t turning enemies into friends a greater guarantee of peace than so-called “strategic” borders?

Please, Mr. President, demonstrate to Israel by your own actions that by rejecting chauvinistic, imperialistic visions of a Greater USA, and making painful compromises for peace, you put an end to the ever-increasing cycle of violent gestures between ourselves and the North Koreans. That way Israel will know you are not just being frivolous with Israel’s security when you ask Israelis to take risks for peace. That way Israel will know that you truly have Israel’s best interests at heart when you ask them to make painful compromises with their murderous, cruel, implacably evil Arab neighbors.