Three of the best minds available today, Fareed Zacharia, Michael Hayden and James Clapper were all on GPS this past Sunday and all agreed on two points; One, Trump’s only reason for canceling the Iran Deal was because Obama had set it up and two; we didn’t make the world safer by canceling the Ian deal and allowing them to start up their nuclear capabilities now instead of in 10 or 15 years. It has become crystal clear that every sentient human who is not busy kissing Trump’s ass thinks this move on the Iran Deal was a horrible mistake. He has achieved nothing and given Iran free license to start up their program again. In addition he has put our European allies in a position where they must choose between Iran and us on trade issues, a problem they didn’t have and don’t want. Trump and his acolytes keep harping on the money that Iran got back from our banks. Did Trump somehow get that money returned? No! So what did Trump achieve by canceling the Iran Deal? His sycophants babble about saving us from Iran’s nuclear proliferation but that is patently illogical, so the answer is nothing.
The hardliners are out in force in Iran screaming, “Death to America” and burning our flags but what else is new? Trump’s stupidity in pulling out of the deal has given the hardliners a gift. They can now say that Iranian President Rouhani was wrong in dealing with the West. But the Iranian economy is not great and the relieving of the sanctions for the deal was helping it. So Iran will probably stick to the deal as long as the Europeans stay with it.
The Iranian people, as opposed to the Iranian government, have been very pro-western. Trump’s dumb move has done nothing to help that. In his blundering stupidity Trump has played right into the hands of the Ayatollahs and their hard right backers. No matter what the administration lobbyists say, no matter what lies they try to spread over this incredible blunder, there is only one possible reason for Trump making that move. It goes all the way back to a night at a White House Correspondents dinner when Barak Obama made Trump look like the asshole he is. Trump never forgave that and he never will. His ego will never let him get over it and he is willing to start another war in the Middle East just to undo something that Obama did that bruised his ego. That’s pretty pathetic but then so is Trump.
So the plan was, in just about one month Donald Trump would be meeting with Kim Jung Un in Singapore to decide the future of nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula. What were the chances of this working? What were the major obstacles? Is there really a possibility of Trump and Kim ending up wrestling on the conference room floor? The smart money says bet on it.
So this weekend John Bolton opened his mouth again and North Korea has pulled out of its talks with South Korea and then did a 180 and announced that they wouldn’t ditch their nuclear program just to get sanctions lifted. But before you get your panties in a bunch, understand that this is nowhere near new. North Korea has done this kind of thing over and over since the 1950’s. Kim is about as reliable as Trump, which is not a great basis for anything happening.
After seeing what China did last week and what Kim was doing over the weekend no reasonable man or woman can say with even minimal certainty that Donald Trump has even read, The Art of the Deal, much less written it.
So let’s take a look at a little background here and maybe we can come up with our own scenario of what has already happened and what we can look for in the future.
When Kim replaced his father, he looked around and saw a grim, poverty-stricken nation that had been on the verge of war with the west since the 1950’s. He checked out the rest of the world and saw that dictators who weren’t protected by nuclear weapons and who attracted the attention of the United States had a very short shelf life. Especially high on the US death list were Saddam and Gaddaffi, neither of whom, for obvious reasons, was around any more. Kim’s only possible plan was fairly obvious. Protect his regime with nuclear weapons. So ignoring all previous commitments Kim pushed ahead to develop a nuclear capability and a means of delivering it. As of now he has succeeded. But with this massive accomplishment came a problem. Now he had the weapon or weapons. What the hell could he do with them? He couldn’t use his nuclear capacity. He had, at most a bomb or two that could reach the US. He knew that if he were audacious enough to launch one, the US with his massive capabilities would turn his country into a molten, radioactive lava pit. So what to do?
Even as Kim was mulling his problem, nervous nellies in the United States were screaming nuclear attack and duck & covering under their desks. Hovering around the edges of this scene and searching desperately for a way to show the world that he is not just a bully but actually a tough guy was Donald Trump. Trump had attacked all his predecessors about their failures to deal with Korea and now he saw a way to use his normal business tactics to get some movement in the problem. He started a war of words with Kim. It was interesting because neither leader is comfortable with words, so it quickly degenerated into; “So’s your old man!”
So Kim looked out at the madman from America screaming and threatening and decided that he had nothing to lose by making an audacious offer. The US sanctions were killing his already awful economy. Maybe he could engage this nutcase in a dialog that would result in the dropping of some of the sanctions and the way America loved to throw around money, maybe even some bucks for his country. So he announced that he would stuff his nuclear capability if the Americans would drop sanctions and he would work this out in a meeting with Trump. Trump who doesn’t think, figuring that this was Kim succumbing to his loudmouthed threats, quickly accepted the idea of meeting with Kim and began announcing his candidacy for a Pulitzer Peace Prize. What the hell, he figured, Obama got one for practically nothing, why not me for solving the North Korea problem.
No sooner were the phones back in their cradles than Trump’s latest appointment mistake came out of the woodwork and added to the country’s problems. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was running back and forth to Korea, doing due diligence and collecting information that would be desperately needed by an almost completely uninformed administration when John Bolton stepped out of the shadows and opened the big empty mouth associated with his small empty brain. As anyone who has ever read this blog knows, I have no love for the mustache that walks like a man. I consider him a warmonger, and more than partly responsible for the Iraq war but under questioning a while back he appeared to reveal a man who had reasonable opinions and a realistic approach to the peace talks with North Korea.
He spoke intelligently about how the peace process could move ahead, what will be necessary to accomplish that and avoided Martha Raddatz of This Week’ssimplistic and often silly questions about it. I don’t understand how a reporter with Raddatz’s background and experience can seriously ask whether the peace process can be completed in one day but she did. Bolton had every right to get up and walk out of the room but he didn’t.
Unfortunately the interview went on to the Iran deal which Bolton’s idiot boss had just cancelled and it was then that Bolton regressed to his old self, lying about facts in evidence and beating that useless drum that the Iranian’s lied when they said they never wanted a nuclear weapon. Bolton is supposed to be smart enough to recognize a political statement but he dummied up to make the deal look bad. Anyone who has read even a minimal amount of political talk understands the statement: “We never wanted a nuclear weapon,” with the subtext; but we were forced to develop one for protection, is the excuse of every nation in the world that has or wants to create a nuclear arsenal. That is the firmly stated position of Israel, America, Russia, China, and everyone else. Sure it’s hypocritical but that’s politics on an international scale.
Then Bolton goes on to state that opening an American embassy in Jerusalem is just recognizing the reality that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and that this will help the peace process. Either he’s a lot dumber than most people think he is or he’s even more dishonest that I thought he was because this will do nothing but hinder the peace process, especially as long as Netanyahu is in charge in Israel. And as far as Jerusalem being the capital of Israel this is pure bullshit. Jerusalem is an international city. It always has been and it still is. It is not only the home of the Hebrew religion but also of Catholicism and Islam. Trying to make it as capital of one, torn and tortured nation for political purposes is just begging for the peace process, already in deep trouble, to fail.
But Jerusalem wasn’t Bolton’s only blunder of the week. On the weekend he announced that Trump would only accept complete annihilation of North Korea’s nuclear facilities and that the US will lift no sanctions or do anything to help North Korea’s economy until everything was finished and proven. But that wasn’t enough for Bolton, who some think to be very smart but is, as can be observed, constantly saying stupid stuff. He had to add that this negotiation would follow the “Libyan model.” For those who don’t follow history, Libya is where Gaddaffi peacefully gave up his nuclear weapons and then we killed him. Call me crazy but it seems to me that this was not a great scenario to present to an already nervous Kim. I’m willing to accept, what all my, now suspect, friends say about Bolton being smart but if he is, he is also a demented maniac bent on dragging us into a war with North Korea just like he pushed the slow thinking Bush into one with Iraq. We all saw how that one turned out for us.
No one with any intelligence expected a solid peace plan to come out of a meeting between Trump and Kim but the hope was that some kind of beginning could be achieved. No rational human being expected Kim to agree to dump all his nuclear capabilities and allow invasive inspections the first day of talks just as they didn’t expect Trump to drop all sanctions and throw money at Kim. But for the first time in a half-century there was just a slight glimmer of hope that at least we could start a process that might ultimately lead to something that worked for the world. John Bolton seems to have jammed a wrench into those gears. This draft-dodging slug has no business being involved in any way with what we do with our military,
Will Trump or a viable substitute ever get to sit down with Kim or one of his advisors? There was really only a so, so chance to start with. Now that opening, thanks to John Bolton has gotten smaller. Maybe Trump’s desire for a shot at the Nobel will drive him to go all out to make it happen, but even if it does, the best we can hope for is a long drawn out negotiation that just keeps the lid on things for a few years. That would accomplish a couple of things. It would take the reins out of Trump’s hands even while making him happy that he could say he is continuing the negotiation process. It would also keep Kim happy as long as we threw him a bone every once in a while to help his failing economy. It’s not a solution but then, sometime solutions aren’t what we need. Especially if they aren’t the right ones and there is no way in the world that we can expect Trump to come up with a solution that is actually good for the world unless he can figure out a way to make money off it.