PRESS RELEASE
Tulsi Gabbard: Try Diplomacy with North Korea, Not Regime Change
Dec. 6, 2017 (EIRNS)—Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) wrote yesterday that Dec. 1, the day when Hawaii began monthly "nuclear attack" warnings to the citizens, "marks a dark day for Hawai’i, for our country, and the world."
"Today marks the first day of a new era, in which the lives and future of the people of our state have indelibly changed, as they’ll be reminded every month with nuclear warning siren tests that any moment, we, our children, our families, and our precious ‘aina [peace and harmony] will be vulnerable to a nuclear attack from North Korea—with mere minutes’ notice.
"I’ve been raising the issue of the increasing threat from North Korea ever since I came to Congress,"
she said,
"because the people of Hawai’i have long known that North Korea’s continued growing capabilities put us squarely within range of their ICBMS."
Gabbard calls it a "travesty and a total failure of leadership by both Republican and Democratic administrations" over the past 40 years that "have left the people of Hawai’i and this country... under the dark cloud of a nuclear threat from this point forward."
"The only possible option to remove this dark cloud will come through the pursuit of serious diplomacy...with North Korea and Kim Jong Un; understand why he’s holding on so tightly to their nuclear weapons—it is because he sees them as his only deterrent from the U.S. coming in and trying to topple his regime."
"Kim Jong Un looks back to the U.S.’s track record, and how we ovethrew Saddam Hussein in Iraq because of intelligence he had weapons of mass destruction. He sees how even after Muammar Gaddafi in Libya was promised by the U.S. that if he gave up nuclear weapons we wouldn’t go after him, we went after him anyway and took him out. He looks at [us] trying to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad...and how the Trump administration and others in Congress are increasing their rhetoric to go after Iran and overthrow the government."
She concludes,
"In order for serious negotiations to have a chance, our country must actually end our regime-change policies. This is necessary for North Korea to see that we are serious when we say we are not interested in topping their regime, and that we are serious about achieving peace, stability, and prosperity in a denuclearized Korean Peninsula."
