The Trump Presidency

Discussion in 'Politics' started by joepistole, Jan 17, 2017.

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  1. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    These are extraordinary times.
    They often say that the first step is the hardest. Congratulations Planet Earth. It may not lead to immediate change but certainly it is a significant step in the right direction.
     
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  3. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    In Australia the press (printed/TV) has been generally very positive . In fact it would have to be the first positive press I have seen concerning Trump since his inauguration.
     
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  5. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    As the world adjusts.
     
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  7. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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  8. Bells Staff Member

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    By legitimising a despotic and murderous dictator that no President or leader outside of China has ever recognised or legitimised?

    People accused of political crimes are arrested and sentenced to prison camps without trials, while their families are often kept in the dark about their whereabouts. Up to 120,000 inmates were in the country’s four major political prisons in 2014 and were subjected to gruesome conditions, according to the United Nations report.

    Prisoners are starved, forced to work, tortured and raped. Reproductive rights are denied through forced abortions and infanticide. Some are executed — sometimes in public. Hundreds of thousands of political prisoners have died in the camps over the past 50 years, the United Nations report found.

    [...]

    Since Mr. Kim assumed power in 2011, taking over from his father, Kim Jong-il, he has consolidated his power through executions. In the first six years as leader, he has ordered the executions of at least 340 people, according to the Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank arm of the National Intelligence Service.

    In 2016, Kim Yong-jin, the deputy premier for education, was killed in front of a firing squad after showing “disrespectful posture” in a meeting. Hyon Yong-chol, a general over the armed forces, fell asleep in a meeting. He was executed with an antiaircraft gun.

    Family is also not off limits. One of Mr. Kim’s uncles, Jang Song-thaek, was convicted of treason. He was then executed with antiaircraft machine guns, and his body incinerated with flamethrowers.

    Kim Jong-nam, the estranged brother of the North Korean leader, was killed last year in a very public way: near a check-in counter at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia. Two women were seen on security cameras walking up to him and rubbing a substance on his face — a chemical warfare agent known as VX, the United States later determined.

    Kim Jong-nam was dead within minutes. The women were arrested, but the United States said evidence showed that North Korea was responsible for the attack.

    [...]

    According to the United Nations report, which was prepared by its Commission of Inquiry and is more than 300 pages long, North Korea “operates an all-encompassing indoctrination machine that takes root from childhood to propagate an official personality cult and to manufacture absolute obedience” to Mr. Kim.

    Independent thought is bred out and propaganda glorifying the state is plentiful, the report said, as is propaganda intended to “incite nationalistic hatred toward official enemies” like Japan and the United States.

    [...]

    North Korea considers the spread of most religions dangerous, but Christianity is considered a “particularly serious threat” because it “provides a platform for social and political organization and interaction outside the realm of the State,” according to the United Nations report.

    Christians are barred from practicing their religion, and those caught doing so are “subject to severe punishments,” the report found. North Korean leaders also conflate Christians with those detained in prison camps, those who try to flee and “others considered to introduce subversive influences,” the report stated.

    [...]

    Two million to three million people were believed to have died during an extended famine in North Korea in the 1990s, The New York Times reported in 1999, around when the country began to recover.

    At the time, North Korea used food as a tool to enforce political loyalty, prioritizing its distribution based on who was most useful to the nation’s political system, the United Nations report stated.

    More recently, the inmate population in North Korea’s political prison camps has been culled through “deliberate starvation,” the report found, adding that suspects are also starved “to increase the pressure on them to confess and to incriminate other persons.”

    Yeah, huge congratulations.

    We can all sleep soundly at night now.
     
  9. geordief Valued Senior Member

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    No doubt but the underlying problem (regardless of regime) is that any nation can adopt a nuclear program to gain "respectability".

    The nuclear non-proliferation roadmap has been binned and I am uncertain of the consequences.

    An immediate conflict in N/S Korea may have been pushed down the road and that is indeed a small victory (but actually helping the NK population is an extremely tough ask and we should know that China has succeeded so far in adopting capitalistic practices without being "infected" by democratic freedoms-so NK is well "sheltered" in this regard. )
     
  10. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    I am not going to rant on about your rant however let me post this:
    The half life of nuclear fall out is considerably longer than the life span of one despot.
    So before you get all thingo about the morality of dealing with the past deeds of a tyrant you need first to deal with the consequences of what happens to millions, if not billions of people that would be affected by someone throwing a tantrum about human rights at this point in time.
    The step taken at the summit does not absolve the Kim Dynasty of it's crimes but it deals with the reality of what it may take to serve the greater good.
    I for one will sleep better tonight knowing that my grandchildren's future may look brighter than it did only a few months ago.
    As for the people of North Korea, I feel their futures, likewise, are more secure even if they may still have to endure the changes yet to occur in the management of their country.
    Those changes are inevitable if we are allowed to live long enough to experience them.
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2018
  11. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    I believe the strategy employed by the USA government is very similar to the strategy used upon signing of the unconditional surrender of Japan WW2. Though different in many respects the concept of offering NK USA protection and rebuilding efforts is similar. I will not go into detail to avoid any possibility of prejudicing the immediate future. ( NK do monitor the net be sure of that)
    I believe that it has every chance of success as it ultimately provides a win win solution as it did for Japan, if taken up by the Kim dynasty.
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2018
  12. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    Not talking rarely yields positive results.
     
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  13. Bells Staff Member

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    I should not be surprised. You carried water for another murderous regime quite recently...

    Wait. That's your play?

    So a regime that has murdered millions of people, either through torture, executions, starvation for various reasons ranging from now bowing low enough to *gasp* reading a book from the 'outside', well, that's all okay because nuclear fallout lasts longer than that regime could, because hey, what's one dictator, right?

    Except it is not just one despot. Three generations of despots and there is absolutely no indication that it ends here and now.

    Past deeds?

    There are currently over 100,000 people locked up in gulags. That is a conservative estimate. The figures are probably much higher. There are even more locked up in indoctrination camps.

    And you are naive enough to believe a tyrant who would do this to his own people, who would see his own uncle murdered and then his corpse set on fire as a way to consolidate his power, a tyrant who developed nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver those weapons to its neighbours, and across the Pacific, Asia, to Europe and the US?

    I mean, we know that you do not view human rights as being valid or important. You showed us that when you decided to shovel offal for Burma's genocidal acts towards its minorities.

    The irony, of course, is that you are essentially posting these arguments while enjoying the full protection of your human rights.

    Who gives a shit about the millions who are suffering, right?

    What steps?

    Back in April of this year, Kim Jong Un uttered the same promises he put in that deal. In other words, this is not new. What Trump just put his name to is the promise of continued denuclearisation by North Korea... Do you know the terms of North Korea's denuclearisation? It was released in April of this year.

    On April 21, Ri Chun-hee, a news presenter at the North Korea's media KCTV, read out a resolution titled "On proclaiming great victory of the line of simultaneous development of economic construction and building of nuclear force", which had been adopted unanimously at the plenary meeting of the ruling party's central committee a day earlier.

    Quite irrationally, media outlets around the world put up breaking news headlines that North Korea has decided to suspend nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests. Some heads of state rushed to release welcoming remarks on North Korea's decision, deeming it evidence that the country has committed to denuclearisation.

    Some of the media also praised the decision, but interestingly, did not quote, intentionally or not, the title or the text of the resolution. A closer look at the wording of the resolution reveals that North Korea has not really committed to denuclearisation.

    So let's take a look at the text.

    The title of the resolution makes it clear that the announcement was made to "celebrate" the great victory of North Korea's simultaneous development of economic construction and building of nuclear forces (the so-called "byungjin" policy in Korean), not to "pledge" commitment to denuclearisation.

    The first paragraph of the resolution says that North Korea has conducted clandestine subcritical nuclear tests even under harsh sanctions. The world knows that it has conducted six underground tests so far, but has had no information about the subcritical tests.

    Since relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions have explicitly prohibited any kind of action leading to the development of nuclear weapons, this basically constitutes a confession from the North Korean regime that it violated these UNSC decisions. In making this public, North Korea must have hoped that the clandestine subcritical nuclear tests would be overlooked. In fact, if there is no official condemnation, today, of these tests, in the future, Pyongyang might see it as a sign that it has been forgiven.

    The second paragraph declares that North Korea has decided to stop the tests and shut down a nuclear test site. While it may appear a significant step towards denuclearisation, the stopping of the tests is no more than the fulfilment of a precondition for talks set by China and Russia. The text makes mention of a commitment to the treatment of neither fissile materials nor nuclear warheads and the facilities for their production. Moreover, the usefulness of the test site is questionable and the testing site may have suffered negative environmental effects.

    The third paragraph hints at North Korea's possible stance in the upcoming talks with US President Donald Trump. The paragraph states that stopping further nuclear tests is an important part of "worldwide disarmament". It is important to note here that the North Korean regime refers to "disarmament" and not "denuclearisation".

    In the fourth paragraph, the text says that North Korea will never use nuclear weapons or transfer them, or nuclear technology, under any circumstance, short of a nuclear threat and provocation against the nation. The paragraph is basically its nuclear doctrine and demonstrates that North Korea now perceives itself as a nuclear state.

    The fifth paragraph reads that North Korea "will concentrate all efforts on building a powerful socialist economy and markedly improving the standard of people's living through mobilisation of all human and material resources of the country." One may argue that this may be interpreted as North Korea giving up building a nuclear arsenal, a pillar of its byungjin policy. On the other hand, it is much more likely that this statement is just a declaration of priority shift after the successful completion of its nuclear project and an expression of the regime's desire to have economic sanctions lifted.

    The resolution concludes by saying that North Korea "will create an international environment favourable for the socialist economy construction and facilitate close contact and active dialogue with neighbouring countries and the international community in order to defend peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the world." This could, indeed, be perceived as a positive message about the regime's commitment to diplomacy. But keeping in mind that the North Korean regime almost entirely depends on support from China, which has not pushed for the denuclearisation of North Korea, one has to accept these words with a grain of salt.


    Trump just sold the farm for 3 beans.

    And it is not a "dynasty". It is a regime.

    Trump just gave Kim everything he wanted and got zip in return. Sleep well tonight knowing that Kim's conditions for denuclearisation means that he will not disarm. Sleep well knowing that he can now make these so called promises because a) he already has the capacity and knowledge to build these weapons and has tested them, he already has the capacity and capability to build more and sleep well knowing that today marks the day that an American President legitimised a horrific regime because he wants a Nobel Peace Prize and did so by ensuring that millions upon millions of people are now much less safe tonight because the very thing that acted as a deterrent against the aggression of said murderous and crazy dictator, was signed away at the behest of the dictator and for what? A continuation of denuclearisating North Korea, when Kim's regime have made clear what that would entail and it will not result in his disarming..

    I mean sure, your future may be bright, because you aren't in that country suffering. But hey:

    Not only naive, but horrifically lacking in empathy or understanding of the actual plight of other people.
    Uh huh.
     
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  14. Bells Staff Member

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    You forget that the Americans dropped nuclear bombs on Japan to get them to surrender.

    To consider that a win/win for Japan... My God, your revision of history is truly horrific. And to apply it to a despotic regime..

    Whatever helps you sleep at night, I guess.
     
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  15. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    I see you so nicely failed to deal with the reality of what a nuclear war with NK would mean... well done!
    You conveniently forget also that China, Iran and even Russia have an interest, all of which have huge human rights issues and getting worse by the day.
    Do you have any solutions? Or are you just going to continue to rant over how impotent you are in the face of such extremes?
    Tell us all how international law is enforced upon sovereign states, rogue or other wise? How one state can force another to comply with their version of human rights?

    And if you say international sanctions please keep in mind the net wealth of Chairman Kim and his cronies and how it is always the common man that suffers the most.
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2018
  16. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Again you refused to accept the reality of what is Myanmar. You refused to understand that the Myanmar military, which Sung has no control over is not quite the conventional, disciplined and regulated military that you imagine.
    You presume that they are some sort of imaginary mirror of what you believe the term military means. Look at Libya, Yemen, Syria and try to work out what the term military means.
    Your naivety if applied by the UN would get an awful lot of the population slaughtered for nothing other than to make you erroneously feel like you are doing something.

    Perhaps you would like to guess at how many people, including women and children are currently being held hostage in Myanmar? 1000? 1,000,000?, try 3,000,000? or maybe it's more ....

    You consistently fail to grasp the sheer scale of what is going on... why is that?
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2018
  17. Bells Staff Member

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    There would be no nuclear war with North Korea.

    Or did that fact escape your notice?

    What do you think kept them in check for so long?

    Can you figure it out? Or are you so invested in your revision of history that it escaped your notice?

    I'll give you a hint. It was the part of one thing that no American President would ever compromise or put on the negotiating table.

    Until Trump just signed it away.

    You could combine all of them and none of them would come close to North Korea.

    And no country has simply given Iran, China and Russia what they wanted in the manner in which Trump just did with North Korea. Worse yet no country has denigrated and insulted its closest allies in a bid to rush to cosy up to a murderous dictator.

    Or did you miss that as well when you decided to rewrite history to suit your narrative?

    There are plenty of solutions, QQ. None of which entail doing what Trump did yesterday. None of which entail legitimising one of the worst dictators of our time and acting to ensure that South Korea and Japan would no longer have the deterrent that was in place.

    None of which would entail rewriting history to suit a 'lets kiss the ring of a murderous dictator' narrative.

    Sanctions, not dealing with them at all, supporting the people of that country in any way possible, maintaining a strong deterrence...

    Not legitimising their regime would be primary to that.

    The net wealth of Kim Jong Un is because his bank accounts were barely touched. He has hundreds of bank accounts around the country to protect his money. Why weren't those accounts frozen? Why is he still able to purchase items from overseas?

    If the US wanted to stop Kim Jong Un, they could freeze his bank accounts across the globe, deny him the right to purchase items from overseas (including for that of his wife). For starters.

    Instead, Kim Jong Un is allowed by the international community, to keep amassing his wealth in their countries.

    Well I guess you feel your way is better.

    To rewrite history, to change the narrative entirely, to praise despots for political expediency and then happily condemn a populace to pain and suffering because then at least it's not billions risking their health due to nuclear fallout.

    That is what you are doing.

    Your biggest issue is that I do know the scale of "what is going on". You choose to rewrite history to diminish what is actually going on. Hell, you started referring to him as Chairman, referred to his despotic regime as a Dynasty and essentially condemned the suffering to pain, imprisonment, torture, rape and death for your grandchildren's brighter future. Then you had the cheek to spout "greater good".

    Why don't you just call him Dear Leader and be done with it, because you know:

    You would not want to offend them, would you?
     
  18. Dr_Toad It's green! Valued Senior Member

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    Why shouldn't Trump play the same game as the little fat monster? The paper it's written on is just as valuable as the ones Trump rips up, and Kim will treat it so. It is face, and on its face, it is a farce.
     
  19. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    I like this outcome. Much better than what I have expected. Ok, this was not that hard, given that I have expected essentially nothing.

    Why have I expected nothing? Because of the main problem, the nuclear weapons. It was quite clear: On the one hand, Kim is not suicidal, at least we have no evidence for this. That means, to give away the nuclear weapons, which is, together with the intercontinental missiles he has now, all that deters a US aggression. On the other hand. the nuclear weapons are officially the main issue, the justification of the sanctions and all this, so Trump cannot simply accept that ok, NK is now a nuclear power, so be it, but let's nonetheless make peace.

    This problem seemed unresolvable. Now, Trump and Kim have found a nice and simple solution. Kim acknowledges denuclearization as the aim to be reached in some future. And this is, in fact, sufficient for Trump to present this as a big victory. Of course, all the Clintonoids cry that he has really reached nothing, but so what? They will always cry. The aim of denuclearization is in the contract, this is what matters, everything else, the details, can be left to future negotiations. What else do you want?

    And what happens during these following negotiations? Hm, let's see. We start with the real hard negotiations in the order as defined by the contract. So, let's start with point 1 and 2. And once we have succeeded with them, we can start negotiating about point 3. (There is also a point 4, which is irrelevant, but given that there is nothing to argue about, let's simply do it immediately.)

    What is point 1 and 2 about? You guessed it, the things which can be really done. Peace and starting a new cooperation. Which is what the Korean people really need. No progress about atomic weapons? No problem, that's only the point 3 of the contract.

    The Clintonoids will whine, see Bells above, "a regime that has murdered millions of people" (forgetting BTW that what has murdered millions in the war were mainly US bombs).

    But nobody will care. If a peace contract follows, if this ends with Russia and China connecting with South Korea via streets, railways, pipelines, everybody will be happy. The people of NK first of all.

    Even if the murderous regime remains in power. Let's see what would be the alternatives.
    Think about why Obama has not done this. If you have found an explanation, give it to an interested auditory.

    Some rough ideas what could be reasonable answers: a.) They exist, in a form which could be easily frozen by the US, only in your fantasy. b.) The Obama regime was much more interested in preserving NK, together with the conflict around NK, to peace after a collapse of NK, because in this case, united Korea could decide that it does not need any US bases.

    Whatever, alternative 1 would be simply to continue Obama's policy. NK lives under serious sanctions, but will not be attacked, in particular, because it has now, with sufficient certainty, not only nuclear weapons but also intercontinental rockets to deliver them to the only power which needs to be deterred. The people in NK live near starvation but remain unable to change anything, the regime is murderous enough to ensure this. The regime itself remains stable. Everybody in the West, in particular, I guess, Bell, are happy with this.

    Alternative 2 would be a war. Probability 20% that Kim succeeds to send a nuclear missile to LA and the rocket defense fails. This would be how many dead Americans? Divide the number by 5, given the probability is only 20%. Or by 50, if you think it is only 2%. Happy with the result? Ok, the US army never fails, so after the first hit there certainly nothing remains from Kim's missiles. Ok, fine. In this case, 80% probability that some nuclear weapon shot by the artillery will reach Seoul. Of course, this does not really matter, these are only Chinamen or so, not really humans, despite all the political correctness nobody really cares. Not? Then, the whole NK army has to be defeated. Don't forget, they are as indoctrinated as the IS, they have a history of fighting the US, and the US has also a history of how to win such wars, namely bombs, bombs, bombs. The US has not fought any war during the last years where the number of civilian victims was less than the number of soldiers. With the army being 25% of the North Korean population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_People's_Army this gives 50% of the NK population of 25 mio dead.

    The Trump solution is, or at least it looks like this now, simply peace. Yes, the murderous regime remains in power. But no longer any danger of war, the South Korean people live much better (transport possibilities via NK), the North Koreans too. Ok, you may think that only the NK leadership gets everything, the people remain as poor as they always have been. I doubt. There will be special zones where South Korean or Chinese firms can produce something with NK workers, and even if the NK workers will be paid cheap and the NK leadership gets its part, they will nonetheless gain much more than now. This has always been the reality of such zones. There will be NK income from transit. And some part of it will trickle down to the people too.
     
  20. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    #poodles | #WhatTheyVotedFor

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    Before we get all self-righteous about nuclear apocalypse, we should first account for the fact of how easily Trump gave away this prestige and, furthermore, how naïve simplistic retorts can sound: The diplomacy of waiting on human rights is its own challenge, but it is also, on this occasion, a question arising for the fact of Trump blindly rushing to legitimize the regime.

    All those millions and billions of people? They're worth a photo op. That's what this was.

    The thing is that you have to presume so much on behalf of this foolishness in order to reach your vantage; it's not an impossible question, but the first valence of response is skepticism.

    Why don't we stage photo ops with Daa'ish? It ought to work just as well.

    The master dealmaker has yet to get the U.S. anything out of this, but he did get a a photo op.

    This whole thing is turning out to be pro wrestling hype.

    Personally, I don't see the point; Americans aren't leaving the Korean Peninsula, and neither are we giving up our nuclear weapons.

    But, thanks to Donald Trump, our military has buckled before Kim Jong-un's might and respectability. The rest of the world better get something out of this, because naïveté will not excuse Trump's pandering appeasement.

    • • •​

    And remembering, per Von Clausewitz, that all wars are started by defenders, it occurs to wonder if we can avoid bad outcomes by giving those known for cruelty and bad faith every blind credit under the sun while we meet their demands with no real expectation of anything in return?

    Before whom else should the American military tremble and buckle?

    • • •​

    General question: Some would seem to presume good faith all around, but this could be a mistaken assessment resulting from taking those analyses seriously.

    Americans are somewhere between puzzled and laughing into our coffee watching conservatives, who threw fits about the proposition of even talking to such adversaries in 2008, and opposed every attempt to engage Iran, even violating their Constitutional oaths and attempting treason in order to stop the deal, eventually settling on conspiring with foreign powers to decimate American preestige and diplomatic capability, but, hey, as long as it gets Donald Trump a photo op with the wannabe tough guy who needs anti-aircraft cannons to execute people because they apparently aren't capable of murdering people more efficiently, sure, let's give away the proverbial farm.

    1) No negotiating partner has any reason to trust anything Donald Trump says.
    2) No negotiating partner has any reason to trust anything Kim Jong-un says.
    3) Americans just reneged on an international nuclear agreement.
    4) The U.S. military just blinked and backed down on the President's say-so.
    5) The sum effect of what just happened is that the world just watched an American president either get played for the sake of his own egotism or try to play everyone else for the sake of his own egotism.​

    It's not body snatchers. There's no point in demanding someone give us back our Republicans; the thing is that these last decades of pushing conservative "principles" were all a dedicated lie. The fact that after decades of tough and even paranoid talk, these are the people who bring the corruption and the cowardice only surprises compared to the presupposition that we aren't supposed to presume and speak so poorly of our neighbors. The truth of the matter is that nobody who identifies as a conservative or alongside them can, at present, be trusted.

    But, hey, Trump got the military to show its true colors, right? I mean, watching an American president rush toward a "summit" in time to demonstratively tell his armed forces to Appease the North Korean strongman? As the doctrine goes, "We're American bitches!"

    Oh, wait, that wasn't it↱, was it? Still, it works better than Air Force Above All↗, or Marine Corps Schutzstaffel↗.

    To the other, we got nothing out of this. Well, maybe a few days of talking a little less about the the Special Counsel investigation.

    And with some headlines and analyses suggesting the big winner in all this is China? To some degree, that would be right in line with #WhatTheyVotedFor.

    Oh, right, the question: So, who among those seeking some potential for merit in President Trump's reckless farce are presuming some manner of good faith from either of the prime actors, who are in turn even described by a Republican propaganda host, in a Freudian careen, as "two dictators"↱? A centrist Republican with a gig at a centrist cable news outfit described the whole farce↱ as a catch-all "Trumpian head-fake", explaining, "This is it. This is all he's got. This is his midterm strategy, this is his get out of sitting down with Bob Mueller strategy."

    When appeals to practicality require extraordinary presuppositions, such needs stand out. We should probably account for them: On what does anyone base their presupposition of good faith which would, as such, defy virtually all evidence on record regarding these actors?
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Edwards, David. "Fox & Friends host slips: Trump's North Korea summit is a 'historic meeting between two dictators'". Raw Story. 10 June 2018. RawStory.com. 12 June 2018. http://bit.ly/2sWelCg

    Fenwick, Cody. "'The Whole Thing Was a Trumpian Head Fake': MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace Explains How Trump Is Playing the American People". AlterNet. 11 June 2018. AlterNet.org. 12 June 2018. http://bit.ly/2JPkf2i

    Goldberg, Jeffrey. "A Senior White House Official Defines the Trump Doctrine: 'We're America, Bitch'". The Atlantic. 11 June 2018. TheAtlantic.com. 12 June 2018. https://theatln.tc/2MfXlzH
     
  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    No one was ever not talking, with North Korea.

    They just weren't agreeing to remove restrictions and reduce threats and allow expansion of influence and diminish the protections accorded NK enemies, in exchange for even weaker concessions than were made in the past. (Granted those agreements were broken by the US side as well).

    We can consider what "positive" means in Trump's case, from the viewpoint of what 1) benefits Putin, and 2) facilitates Trump family casino and real estate interests. It's quite likely that such benefits would also involve some kind of progress toward a reduction of tensions and so forth, but their effect on NK nuclear weapons programs is less clear. KJU needs them.
     
  22. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    I rest my case. Our local Putin rep sees much to like here.
    That's what happened the other times. Why does that strike you as unexpected?
    Which is the first and oddest and most threatening puzzle: How does that happen? Because Trump just got fleeced, humiliated in public - major concessions damaging to US interests for actually less than nothing, for accepting a loss from the status quo (the denuc agreements of the past were much stronger, and NK need do absolutely nothing on its side).
    The nukes have never, and do not now, deter US aggression. For starters, they still don't actually exist as combat ready weapons - let alone in 2005, 2001, and 1994, to name other years in which an American President obtained a promise of denuclearization from the ruler of North Korea. (And those promises were much stronger)

    So that's not exactly what KJU needs them for. They will help, when they go on line, but he has other fish to fry.
    c) He can't go after NK assets without running foul of Chinese interests. d) He can't freeze assets outside the US on his own tic, and nobody else wants the US to pull out of the area - a lot of other countries in China's orbit want the US to remain in force, with NK as justification, for their own reasons.
     
  23. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    (¡guffaw!)

    Honestly, when you need make-believe in order to have an argument, you're doing it wrong. (Seriously, if you haven't figured this out, yet ... y'know, never mind.)


    Even skeptics thought Trump and Kim might agree to something resembling tangible results. They didn't.

    But in the American president's mind, the agreement includes commitments that apparently only he can see. Consider this exchange between Trump and ABC News' George Stephanopoulos:

    STEPHANOPOULOS: [North Koreans] have to get rid of all their nuclear weapons?

    TRUMP: They have to get rid of, yeah, I think that they will. I really believe that he will. I've gotten to know him well in a short period of time.

    STEPHANOPOULOS: Did [Kim] tell you that?

    TRUMP: Yeah, he's de-nuking, I mean he's de-nuking the whole place. It's going to start very quickly. I think he's going to start now.

    No, he's not. No one could possibly believe that North Korea is "now" in the process of getting rid of its nuclear program. That's not what Kim Jong-un said; that's not what he and Trump agreed to yesterday; and that doesn't even make sense given everything we know about North Korea's position.


    (Benen↱)

    Or, as the more succinct line goes: "He lied ahead of the summit; he's lying after the summit."

    And that's the thing: Who, really, is stupid enough to believe Donald Trump, at this point? He didn't even make it out of the day before hedging:

    Trump told reporters that he trusts Kim and believes North Korea will implement the denuclearization policies the leaders agreed on during their historic summit.

    "I may be wrong," Trump said during a news conference after the meeting. "I may stand before you in six months and say, 'Hey, I was wrong.' "

    "I don't know that I'll ever admit that, but I'll find some kind of an excuse," Trump added with a smile.


    (Gstalter↱)

    I mean, seriously: You want us to believe you believe Donald Trump?

    Okay.

    If you insist.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Benen, Steve. "To sell benefits of North Korea talks, Trump knows the truth isn’t enough". msnbc. 12 June 2018. msnbc.com. 12 June 2018. https://on.msnbc.com/2JQgF86

    Gstalter, Morgan. "Trump: If I was wrong about Kim, 'I'll find some kind of an excuse'". The Hill. 12 June 2018. TheHill.com. 12 June 2018. http://bit.ly/2Mpb8DQ
     
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