Tag Archives: North Korea

International news

Normalization? Sure, but first things first

Donald Trump has placed yet another bargaining chip on the table as he gets set to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

He said he wants to “normalize” relations with the reclusive Marxist regime.

OK, then. Where do we start with that?

Let’s recall the conservative outcry that erupted when President Barack Obama raised the Stars and Stripes over the newly reopened U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba.

Why, we cannot have normal relations with them Cubans. Look at the way they treat their citizens, not to mention that they promote terrorism abroad, they said. That communist Fidel Castro promised to be a reformer when he took over the country in 1959, but he damn sure didn’t live up to that promise, they howled. He made things worse!

Never mind that the Cubans never posed a direct military threat to the United States, particularly after the Soviet Union imploded in 1991. Yes, we had that Cuban missile crisis in 1962, but President Kennedy took care of that with a blockade and the threat of a “full retaliatory response” if the Soviet Union used those missiles to attack any nation in this hemisphere.

So, what will the current president demand of the North Koreans?

What’s more, are we going to hear howls from the right wing about the North Koreans’ treatment of its citizens? Or about how the government starves its people while spending billions on a military apparatus that now includes nuclear weapons?

And what about the North Koreans’ direct military threat to this country, and to the South Koreans, and to Japan?

I do believe as well that Kim Jong Un’s regime has been sponsoring terrorism abroad, too.

I am all in on normalizing relations with North Korea. Any effort to create a U.S.-North Korea bond, though, carries more preconditions than U.S.-Cuba relations did.

To think the president says he doesn’t need much “preparation” in advance of his meeting with Kim Jong Un.

He needs to rethink that bit of idiocy.

International news

POTUS: I don’t need to prepare for summit

Donald Trump said what? That he doesn’t need to prepare for a landmark summit meeting with the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un?

The president says the meeting set for next week will float or sink on “attitude.”

OK, then.

Do you think Kim is flying by the seat of his pants as the historic meeting approaches? I do not believe that’s the case.

Which brings me to pose this question: Will an unprepared Trump be able to reach some sort of rapprochement with an adversary with whom we have been at war since 1950?

Politico reported today: In extensive remarks during a visit from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump mused about what might come out of the Singapore summit scheduled for next week, telling reporters that he’s “totally” prepared to walk away from the negotiating table, that he’s holding out hope for normalized relations with the repressive regime, that the U.S. could strike an agreement to formally end the Korean War, and that he could see hosting Kim in America if the meeting goes well. 

Trump has indicated the meeting could only be the first of several such meetings that produce groundbreaking agreements.

Does anyone out there wonder how in the world the president figures to make any constructive steps toward those ends without cracking the books, poring through briefing papers, learning about the man with whom he will meet?

Look, we all should hope for the best. We all should want the president to succeed, for the sake of the nation and the world. No one should want to be in a constant state of tension with a nation that possesses nuclear weapons. And no one should endorse a president who continues to threaten that nation with “fire and fury the likes of which the world has never seen.”

“Attitude” well might be insufficient to produce a result that Trump wants. Oh, I do hope the president can succeed in this wholly unconventional run-up to a landmark summit.

My fear keeps me from believing fully in his ability to pull it off.

International news

Trump-Kim summit back on … for now?

Just when you thought Donald J. Trump had tossed aside a chance to make peace with a decades-long enemy, well, he announced that he now plans to take that chance after all.

The president today announced that his meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is back on. It’s set for June 12 in Singapore.

The president made quite a show of his decision to cancel the meeting after Kim said some angry things about the United States. I thought the summit was a goner. It bummed me out.

It’s back on. Trump had a meeting today at the White House with the No. 2 man in North Korea, Kim Jong Un’s right-hand guy. He delivered a note from Kim. Trump, curiously, then admitted he didn’t read Kim’s letter before agreeing to meet with him later this month.

Eh? Huh? What?

Well, he’s going to fly to Singapore for what he now hints might be the first of a series of meetings with North Korea. The goal is to get Kim to “denuclearize,” meaning to get rid of the nukes in his arsenal. Plus, there might be an actual peace treaty on the table, given that the Korean War shooting ended in 1953 only because of a ceasefire that both sides signed; there is no peace treaty, meaning that North and South Korea — and the United States — are technically in a state of war.

Can we trust Kim Jong Un? No. We cannot. However, can we trust our own president to carry these noble goals across the finish line? Sadly, no on that one, too.

However, let us hope for the best once these two mercurial leaders shake hands and start talking to each other.

media news

Call a halt to media war, Mr. POTUS

It’s getting tiresome.

With actual foes and enemies of this country looking to do us harm, our head of state is concentrating his fire on the media. Russians have attacked our electoral system; North Koreans want to build nuclear bombs; Syrians are getting gassed by their government.

Donald Trump is fixated over reporting on his presidential administration.

He calls any negative press coverage “fake news.”

What’s more, it’s been revealed that he told CBS News’s Leslie Stahl that he continues the anti-media barrage to sow distrust among the public. If the media report negatively on the administration, Trump told Stahl, the public won’t believe them.

See? It’s part of the Trump strategy!

Those of us who toiled in the media are sickened by it. They are ashamed of the president who is assailing men and women who pledge to report the truth and do that very thing to the best of their ability.

Previous presidents of both parties have endured their share of media negativity. Do they declare war against the media? Do they accuse the media of being the “enemy of the American people”? Do they insist that “most” members of the media are “dishonest people”?

No. They recognize the media has a role to play, which is to hold public officials accountable.

Trump doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand the media’s role in protecting this country.

He lies. He embellishes. He condemns the media. Constantly!

Frightening.

International news

No Peace Prize for POTUS this year

Well, there goes the Nobel Peace Prize for Donald John Trump.

Some folks had been beating the Peace Prize drum for the president on the basis of a proposed summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Then the North Korean despot began talking negatively about Donald Trump, the United States, South Korea … you name it.

Now the summit is a goner. It won’t happen as planned on June 12 in Singapore. Will it be revived? Who knows?

I was one who had some hope that it could produce a breakthrough in U.S.-North Korea relations. It won’t.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the president’s announcement that the summit had been canceled was his return to the tough-guy rhetoric that mentions the immense power of the U.S. nuclear weaponry. As CNN reported: And he renewed his boasts of America’s nuclear weapons, which he called “so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.” 

Then he added this in a statement from the Roosevelt Room in the White House: “Our military, which is by far the most powerful anywhere in the world — that has been greatly enhanced recently, as we all know — is ready as necessary.”

It makes me respond: Duh!

The entire world knows this already, Mr. President. Including Kim Jong Un. There was some thought expressed that Trump’s in-your-face rhetoric about the size of his nuclear arsenal brought about the prospects of the summit in the first place.

I hope we’re not headed back to Square One with Kim Jong Un.

Today, though, was a serious setback in the quest for peace on the Korean Peninsula.

International news

‘Libya model’ in play … or not?

That didn’t take long.

Donald Trump brings John Bolton aboard just a few weeks ago to be national security adviser. Bolton, a noted hard-liner, then tell Fox News that the president will follow the “Libya model” in shaping U.S. policy with regard to North Korea’s nuclear program.

What does the president then do? In Bolton’s presence, he tells reporters he isn’t following the Libya model, that he’s going to craft a unique policy as it concerns efforts to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons.

“The Libyan model isn’t a model that we have at all, when we’re thinking of North Korea (DPRK),” Trump told reporters at the White House before meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

You see, the Libya model didn’t work out well for the late Moammar Gadhafi, the strongman who used to run Libya.

Rebels revolted there, overthrew Gadhafi, then captured him and dragged off to some location — and then killed him! He’s dead, man!

Do you think North Korea’s strongman, Kim Jong Un, wants to hear some comparison to the Libya model? I, um, do not believe so.

Trump is trying to preserve some semblance of hope that he and Kim will actually meet next month in Singapore to discuss a whole range of issues. It’s a big deal, this meeting. U.S. presidents and North Korean dictators have never met face to face.

Trump’s rhetoric about Kim has transformed from threats to “Little Rocket Man” to high praise for him as someone interested in forging an actual peace treaty with South Korea.

Then his national security adviser, Bolton, steps in it by referring to an event that ended badly for another world leader.

Let’s get our nation’s message straight, shall we?

International news

What happened to those sweet nothings?

All that sweet talk Donald J. Trump has been heaping on Kim Jong Un of late seems to have gone into one ear and out the other.

The North Korean dictator seems to be putting the planned Trump-Kim summit in some jeopardy because he’s angry over the planned joint military exercises that will take place with South Korean and American troops.

Kim thinks the military maneuvers are meant to prepare for an invasion of North Korea, or so he says. Thus, the summit might not happen if Kim decides to pull the plug on it.

What is happening here?

U.S. and South Korean troops have been practicing for years since the ceasefire ended shooting during the Korean War. We haven’t invaded the North yet. The exercises are meant to prepare the South for a possible invasion from the North; I mean, the North did invade the South in 1950, which caused the Korean War. Kim Jong Un’s grandfather started the fight.

The president of the United States was yammering about “little Rocket Man,” and bragging about the size of his “nuclear button.” He was taunting Kim to try anything at all to provoke a response that would deliver “fire and fury the likes of which the world has never seen.”

Donald Trump changed secretaries of state. The new guy at State, Mike Pompeo, went to North Korea in secret and then the nations announced the summit between Trump and Kim.

Suddenly, Kim has become a paragon of virtue in Trump’s mind. He released those three Americans he held captive. Trump hailed Kim Jong Un as a fine man, a wonderful fellow.

Now we have Kim threatening to upset everything all over again.

Don’t tell me the North Korean despot responses positively only to epithets. That cannot possibly be true, can it?

My hope is that Trump holds his fire. If he’s able.

International news

Give credit where it is due

I’ll admit to being a bit slow on the uptake with this word of praise for the president of the United States.

My wife and I are in the midst of executing a relocation from one community another. I’m taking a breather at the moment. So … here goes.

Donald J. Trump managed to secure the release of three Americans held hostage by North Korean dictator/goofball Kim Jong Un. I want to give the president a good word that release on the eve of his June summit with Kim, which will occur in Singapore.

Kim Jong Un is a nasty fellow who runs a nasty regime that adheres to a nasty ideology. That the three Americans — all of Korean descent — have come out of their imprisonment in relatively good shape is nothing short of miraculous.

Trump, though, seemed to stumble on his success when he welcomed the men back home at 3 a.m. While delivering some impromptu remarks, the president seemed to heap some undeserved praise on Kim, calling his behavior “excellent.”

I’m shaking my head a bit. Mr. President, Kim Jong Un held these men against their will, leveling a bogus espionage charge against them. There is nothing “excellent” about that act. Nothing, sir!

The president deserves an “excellent” grade, though, for dispatching Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to work out the details of the summit — and for bringing the three American captives home.

As for Kim Jong Un, I feel the need to caution the president to tread very carefully in the weeks leading up to the summit. Kim cannot be trusted to do the right thing any more than some of Trump’s own critics — and that includes yours truly — can trust him to do right.

Still, well done, Mr. President, in securing the release of these three Americans.

International news

Welcome home, American hostages

Three Americans held hostage are on their way home, where they’ll likely get quite a red-carpet welcome led by the president of the United States.

They were held by North Koreans who held them on phony “espionage” charges.

This is a most positive development, although we should take care to avoid overstating it — or understating it, for that matter.

Donald J. Trump’s tough talk directed at North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un well might be part of a remarkable change in tone coming from the reclusive Marxist regime in Pyongyang. If that is the case — and it’s a bit early to make that final determination — then we might be witnessing a new form of “diplomacy” practiced by the leader of the free world.

Trump and Kim and headed for a landmark summit. Trump is demanding an end to the Kim’s nuclear-weapon development aspirations. Kim wants assurances that the United States won’t invade North Korea. Yes, there remains a huge gulf between the sides.

However, that gulf got a bit narrower today with the release of these three Americans — all of Korean descent. Let’s now hope their health is as good as it has been advertised, and that the two leaders can proceed toward a summit that leads to a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula.

political news

Nobel for Trump? Not … just … yet!

They’re chanting “No-bel! No-bel! No-bel!” at a political rally in Michigan, where the president of the United States is staging a campaign rally.

Why the chant? Well, the crowd of Trumpkins thinks Donald Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize because North and South Korea’s leaders shook hands at the DMZ and promised to pledged to sign a peace treaty that ends the Korean War, where the shooting stopped in 1953.

My response? Hold the phone! Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

If North Korean President Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in sign that peace treaty, if Kim Jong Un disassembles nuclear weapons, and if there is a demonstrable lessening of tension on the Korean Peninsula, then let’s consider whether the president deserves the Peace Prize.

Nothing of substance has happened. There might be nothing that will happen. The planned Kim meeting with Donald Trump still hasn’t occurred. Trump has said if it is “not fruitful,” he would walk away from the meeting with Kim.

How would that look to the Nobel committee that awards these prizes? Not well, if you ask me.

If North and South Korea strike a peace deal, if the North de-nukes the peninsula and if Kim and Trump strike a long-term agreement that leads to normalization of relations between the U.S. and the reclusive Marxist regime …

By all means, consider the president as a Nobel Peace Prize recipient. But not before.

Oh, and one more thing. If by chance Donald Trump actually is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the entire world will never hear the end of it.

Never!