The Fall of John Bolton

John Bolton and I rarely agree on anything. But one thing he's right about is North Korea:

“The strategic decision Kim Jong-un is operating through is that he will do whatever he can to keep a deliverable nuclear weapons capability and to develop and enhance it further,” Mr. Bolton said during an appearance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Under current circumstances, he will never give up the nuclear weapons voluntarily.”

This is a direct rebuke of everything Donald Trump has done in his courtship of Kim Jong Un. The reason for Trump's pursuit of this is pure and simple: he thinks he deserves a Nobel Prize. He's jealous that Barack Obama got one.

As Bolton said, Kim will never give up his nuclear weapons. It would mean his death, because the elites in North Korea (rightfully) believe that nuclear weapons are the only thing keeping their regime afloat.

Look at Saddam Hussein. He gave up his weapons of mass destruction and now he's dead.

Look at Muammar Ghaddafi. He gave up his nukes and now he's dead.

This is all the result of George W. Bush's 2002 "axis of evil" speech, in which he named Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Iraq had been defeated by a grand coalition led by the United States in the 1990s. In defeat Saddam relinquished all his WMDs. He was a toothless old man, allowed to rule his country but kept in check by the United States and other forces.

But that wasn't good enough for Bush. He wanted a war. And so in 2003 he got one, acting unilaterally against Iraq (albeit with a smattering of support from a couple of countries trying to curry favor with the US). Bush claimed Saddam had WMDs squirreled away somewhere, and in 2003 weapons inspectors were racing around Iraq looking for them. After months of searching it had become clear that Saddam had none, so Bush invaded before the momentum of frenzy ran out.

The reason Saddam was being cagey about the WMDs was that if he admitted he had none, he would lose face domestically and his people would no longer fear him, inviting revolution.

So Bush invaded Iraq, taking his eye off the ball on the war in Afghanistan.

Iraq was an unmitigated disaster. There were no WMDs. The people did not greet us as liberators. It cost us a trillion dollars, handed Iraq over to control of Shiites beholden to Iran, and created ISIS. A decade later ISIS took territory in Syria, causing mass migration out of Syria and into Europe. That destabilized political systems across Europe as they dealt with the massive influx of Muslim refugees, causing an upwelling of racist and right-wing politics, resulting in nonsense like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump.

Given this background it's clear that talking to Kim is a total waste of time. He knows that showing any weakness will get him killed, like Saddam and Gaddafi.

Yet Trump keeps trying to seduce Kim, talking about the "very nice letter" Kim sent, and all that nonsense. Meanwhile North Korea continues to develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and constantly threatens Japan and South Korea with missile launches into their territorial waters.

Actions against our allies which Trump just ignores.

John Bolton is right that we can't deal with North Korea. He's wrong to think that we should invade the country, because doing so would get millions of South Korean and Japanese citizens killed, as well as thousands of American military personnel stationed there, and potentially Americans within range of Kim's ballistic missiles on the west coast.

So what does Trump think he can get from Kim? Headlines and attention. That's it. He's playing this up in the press the same way he played up his romances with Playboy models like Karen McDougal, before he payed them all off and forced them to sign NDAs. He's wasting his State Department's time and money on this dalliance with Kim in the vain hope that the Nobel committee will give him the prize he covets so much.

Is Trump stupid enough to fall for fawning praise from Kim's PR guys?  Or to believe that Kim would abide by an agreement even if he signed one? Trump rejected the Iran nuclear deal, and they were actually holding to it!

Bolton recently left his position as Trump's national security advisor in disgrace because he kept harping against any North Korean deal. Like pretty much everyone who works for Trump, Bolton's reputation is now destroyed, permanently stained by the corruption of the scumbag in chief.

Yet when he criticized Trump's North Korea policy, Bolton didn't mention the name of the moron responsible for it, though it's clear that's how Bolton perceives Trump. Like pretty much anyone who's ever worked for him. Yet precious few of them raise their voices against the orange skidmark in the Oval Office.

Republicans, please learn from John Bolton's shame. You will be hailed as heroes by all future generations of Americans if you force this clown to resign.