In this week’s newsletter to constituents, Rep. Phil Roe (TN-01) praised the current Washington administration for its “leadership” in relation to proposed talks between the U.S. and North Korea. In his words:
President Trump and his national security team deserve credit for pursuing a strategy that has made the North Koreans seek to engage in dialogue … we could be on the verge of a historic breakthrough thanks to the leadership of the president.
Roe’s crediting of the current administration is mistaken. In fact, North Korea initiated attempts to engage in peace talks with the U.S. well before the current administration took office.
Moreover, what “strategy” is it, exactly to which Rep. Roe refers? A BBC news analysis suggests that the U.S. has not really had a strategy at all, but rather that the disarray, chaos, and unpredictability of our foreign relations have caused South Korea to reach out to the North "because both Koreas have at some point, been perplexed and concerned by American policy".
Roe’s newsletter gives a hint of his own take on what he calls the U.S. “strategy,” explaining that he:
voted in favor of H.R. 1644, the Korean Interdiction and Modernization of Sanctions Act last year, a measure to strengthen sanctions ...
Those sanctions covered a lot of economic territory, some of which reasonably restricted access to materials of potential strategic military importance and curtailed illicit economic activity.
However, I’d like to focus on one component in particular ----namely, the targeting of the ordinary people of North Korea via sanction provisions aimed at fishing, food, agricultural products, and the ability of North Korean people to secure employment.
North Korea has historically endured famines that killed hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. Per the current statement of the U.N. World Food Programme, food insecurity remains rampant and about 40% of the North Korean population is chronically malnourished, with high rates of stunted growth in children and anemia in children and pregnant women.
When the U.S. imposes sanctions aimed at the ability of ordinary people to merely eat, our government essentially transforms food — or the lack of it — into a slow-motion biological weapon of mass destruction that we deploy against an innocent civilian population. Some international observers have used the term “war crime” to describe such mass targeting of civilians.
That Rep. Roe, or anyone in our government, finds it appropriate to stoop to such tactics should prompt a National Day of Sadness - not a celebration. This is not “leadership” — it is cruel tyranny, and it gives those whom we harm powerful reasons to hate us. Imagine, if you can, how you might feel watching your family and children starve because a distant foreign government imposed economic sanctions that limited access to food?
The U.S. Constitution’s 8th Amendment (prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment) would not tolerate a method of execution that involved starving even the most heinous murderer to death. When someone deliberately starves a child within our borders, they are reviled as monstrous and criminally prosecuted. But when Rep. Roe casts a vote that has the effect of starving children in North Korea, he celebrates it as a sign of leadership and boasts of his support for our national interests.
Sadly, Roe’s callous willingness to starve North Koreans is somewhat mirrored in his distortions and rationalizations about hungry Americans via endorsement of restrictions on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (food stamps).
How can Rep. Roe - a physician who claims to be a defender of “the sanctity of human life” - reconcile a vote to starve people with his Hippocratic oath? Does dressing-up the horror of starvation in neutral-sounding political words — “sanctions” — make it easier to ignore the inhumane effect? Would Roe have cast the same vote if he saw the North Korean children face-to-face, sallow eyes, skin hanging off bones, loss of muscle tissue, and heard the cries and screams, or worse, heard nothing because the children were too weak to even moan? God help us if even that gut-wrenching experience would not have changed his mind.
Although former President Jimmy Carter himself employed harsh economic sanctions, he learned from those experiences and subsequently cautioned against using sanctions that target ordinary citizens. Carter observed that this type of sanction is not only inhumane, it is self-defeating, because it plays politically into the hands of dictators who can point to their peoples’ day-to-day suffering as proof that the U.S. is evil. The dictators then enhance their own power by posing as “rescuers.”
Even as Rep. Roe celebrates what he believes to be the effect of sanctions in bringing North Korea into talks, he worries about North Korea reneging on any deal that may emerge. Yet, why should he expect North Korea to keep its promises when we happily break ours? Who in the entire world can have faith in the U.S. when our President lies almost every day and unilaterally breaks past U.S. promises, such as the Paris climate agreement or, as of today’s announcement, the Iran nuclear deal.
And what does the fact that Rep. Roe praises this as “leadership” say to us about him as a Congressman? Can he not tell the difference between leadership and liarship, or does he just not care?
If you would like to help Rep. Roe not be a liar and keep his own original term limit promise and retire, you can make your views count by sharing and following this ongoing blog and by supporting Dr. Marty Olsen, a refreshing Democratic alternative, here: Responsible Change.
Oh yeah, and don’t forget to vote!