The shock over Donald Trump's announcement he would meet North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un without any preconditions has started to fade after Trump started waffling about the whole thing.
But it will ultimately come to nothing. Kim will never give up his nukes. Even if Kim signs an agreement to do so, we know that he will not abide by it. Look at what happened to the other dictators with WMDs:
After the Bush II administration lied about Saddam Hussein having WMDs and started a preemptive war, Saddam was found hiding in a hole and was executed after being put on trial for crimes against humanity.
After giving up his WMD programs, Muammar Gaddafi was captured and reportedly shot in the stomach or head, stabbed in the anus and dropped off the back of a truck.
Trump made a show of attacking Syria for using chemical weapons, but the Syrians have since repeatedly used chemical weapons against civilians. Trump has done nothing since the first retaliatory attack (which didn't hurt Syria because Trump told the Russians it was coming hours beforehand). Why? Syria has the backing of Russia, and Trump never acts against Russia. He has only praise for Putin.
Iran signed a treaty with Europe and the United States to scale back its nuclear ambitions, allowing for inspections and other restrictions on the Iranian nuclear program. But by threatening to scuttle the treaty, Trump has completely undermined the credibility of the United States.
If Trump does indeed break the Iran treaty (and his appointment of Mike Pompeo as secretary of state increases this likelihood), then he will prove that the United States is not a reliable negotiating partner.
If treaties with the United States are agreements with the current president, and not the law of land, no one will enter into good faith negotiations with the United States.
Furthermore, Trump himself has personally reneged on countless contracts, declaring multiple bankruptcies and stiffing hundreds of contractors out of money he owes them.
So anyone -- Kim Jong Un in particular -- negotiating with Trump is clearly not expecting Trump to abide by any agreement he makes: they're just playing for time. They're just buttering him up, playing to his sense of self-importance, while they either develop their nuclear weapons or cement their relationship with the Russians.
Bush's disastrous Iraq war taught dictators that to survive they have two options: get nuclear weapons or Russian backing. Syria and Iran have the Russians. North Korea has nukes and the Russians. Turkey is going with the Russians. Egypt is going with the Russians. Saudi Arabia is going for nukes.
Eastern European countries like Hungary and Poland are selling out to the Russians. Geeze, even Italy is selling out to the Russians.
Meanwhile, Trump is doing everything he can to alienate our European, Asian, North American, South American, Caribbean, Australian and African allies. After Rex Tillerson completely dismantled the State Department and destroyed our diplomatic corps, Trump fired him by tweet and put the CIA in charge of our diplomats and a torturer in charge of the CIA.
The United States used to be a force for peace and democracy across the world. But Trump appears to have entered into a deal with Putin: Russia can have all of Europe and Asia and the United States can have ... the United States.
Trump's America First is America Alone.
The United States used to project power and hope across the globe. Now, under Trump, we have become a nation in moral and psychological decline. We have lost any sort of moral authority: Like Trump, Americans are quickly becoming whiners who just bitch about how unfair life is, blaming everyone else for their problems and lashing out violently.
Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the latest epidemic of of miserable white men who shoot dozens of kids in schools, mow down hundreds of people at Las Vegas concerts and blow up innocent people in Austin with no discernible motive.
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