THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

NORTH KOREA AND IRAQ | 2002-10-26

North Korea has told the United States that it lied about abandoning its nuclear weapons program. The language, complained U.S. authorities, was "very belligerent." In fact, it was the kind of language our "allies" use: "To hell with you, we'll do what we want to."

So while we are preparing to attack Iraq because it is deveoping weapons of mass destruction North Korea tells us it is doing exactly the same thing.

We all know what the real problem is. The real problem goes back to the orginial civil rights movement, to the idea that all races are equal.

Conservatives keep begging liberal forgiveness for having opposed the civil rights movement, but the fact is that the racial equality idea is about to destroy us.

We say that India and Pakistan and now Korea are fully adult countries, peoples who have as much right to atomic bombs as western countries do. That's the way we originally dealt with Iraq.

Once you start treating non-white nations exactly the same way you treat white nations, proliferation of every means of killing - to which they have as much right as you do - is inevitable. You can't put those fires out one at a time.