DONALD TRUMP HAS LIBERATED KOREANS FROM THE ILLUSION THAT AMERICA IS HELPING THEM

[homersapien 11,409]

I was going to post this in the serious section - since it's worth serious discussion (as if ) -  but I figured "goat-rodeo way" was just too much bait to keep it civil, if not "toxic clown show".  

Anyway, enjoy!   (At least for the folks that are capable of defining the argument before criticizing it.)

Hey, this piece is actually presenting a potential "upside" result.

 

IT’S STRANGE TO say, but there is an upside to the goat rodeo way in which President Donald Trump has cancelled, for the moment, his North Korea summit. No president has done a better job of making clear that the United States is an impediment to peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Is this a disaster? It could be, because anything Trump touches can turn to nuclear ash. But the summit cancellation — or postponement or revival or who knows what to call it, given Trump’s garbled moods — has the prospect of being useful if South Korea and North Korea seize the moment to take matters into their own hands, improving their ties despite the toxic clown show in the Oval Office.

“Ultimately, this cannot just go back to how it was before the Winter Olympics,” tweeted Abraham Denmark, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia. “North Korea is in a stronger position, Kim has far more legitimacy, China is more engaged, South Korea has invested a lot into diplomacy, and the U.S. role is more circumscribed.”

While officials in North Korea and South Korea were apparently unaware of the cancellation until Trump announced it, South Korean President Moon Jae-in indicated that his reconciliation efforts would move ahead (and who knows, maybe the summit will move ahead, too). “The denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and ensuring a permanent peace are historic tasks that cannot be delayed or forsaken,” Moon saidafter an emergency session of his national security council.

This is an emperor-has-no-clothes moment, but not only in the sense of Trump and coherent thinking. For more than a century, the Korean Peninsula has been the unlucky target of more foreign intervention than arguably any other spot on the planet (which, I know, is saying a lot). Trump has shown just how capricious and prejudicial the actions of outsiders can be, doing little to serve the interests of the 75 million people who live there.

Read the rest at: https://theintercept.com/2018/05/25/donald-trump-has-liberated-koreans-from-the-illusion-that-america-is-helping-them/