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Trump Meets Kim
President Donald Trump has met Kim Jong-Un in Singapore. Share your thoughts about this historic meeting in the comments below.
Published in General
I think the transition back to fire and fury is gonna be…awkward. But we’ll get there.
Why now? I mean I really hope this is true I just see the history of negotiations with the NorKs and there is a familiar pattern.
So I’m hopeful something comes out of this, its too soon to judge either way.
I do have to say this: is anyone else sickened to see our flag flying next to, and on parity with, the flag for one of the vilest nations in the world? It just rubs me the wrong way.
Moderator Note:
Not helping, rude, bad faithGiving Stalin Eastern Europe?
This truly shows the total, complete and rank stupidity of you neocons.We didn’t give Stalin anything. First, it was never ours to give away. Second, there was just the tinsey, tiny problem of Hitler’s Wehrmacht.Third, I can only think you would have preferred Americans dying rather than Russians dying for a strip of land that historically would be under German or Russian control as it had been for centuries.Trying selling that one to the American public. Bush apologized for this and showed what a total dunce he is.No. I’m not. You seem to be stuck in a loop of moral righteousness and can’t get off.
Try to think beyond your preconceptions about the morality of the world and you might grasp the concept.
I think I’m doing okay but I’m glad you’re worried about me.
The in person meetings are new and historic. North Korea easing up on their propaganda, and for example acknowledging the legitimacy of the South Korean government is new.
Now, it could be Kim has calculated he needs to make these gestures in order to be taken serious enough to extract some concessions, but this is different in a few ways than past negotiations.
The “why now” would essentially be that things have gotten worse for North Korea, or Kim is finally in secure enough of a position that he can make changes he wants without fear of being overthrown by others in his regime.
My approach is completely wait and see. It really could go either way. I don’t think Trump has given up anything that matters so far, so I’m happy to let this continue for now.
Fair enough, I’m in a wait and see mode too although I do think we’ve given up some significant carrots with little to show for it so far.
I’m really not. I don’t share Valiuth’s view that we lack the moral high ground vis-a-vis North Korea, but evil or not, it is a nation. And it has nuclear weapons. I don’t think we have the luxury of taking the posture that they’re too contemptible to talk to. It would be nice if we could, but that’s just not the real world. The flags at a summit just say “you’re an equal in that we’re both nation states on this planet” not “you’re an equal in that your system is morally equivalent to ours.”
Moderator Note:
Not helpful and rudeYou sound kind of stupid to me too, but maybe we have a better conversation if we don’t call each other stupid? Think?I recognize all of that, and it still rubs me the wrong way. I recognize this is entirely emotional, but that flag, our flag, stands for something truly amazing. It’s special, it’s not just the flag of any other nation.
^ Complete agreement.
I think it would have at some point in my life. I can’t tell you exactly what changed. I guess it’s just that if the insanity that is North Korea of the past is going to end, part of it is going to be something of an amnesty by the international community. We all kind of just look the other way at the regime’s past, and the people of North Korea stop being oppressed. We put our flags on par even though they don’t deserve to be, because if humbling ourselves a bit gets the right outcome here, it was worth it.
Frank of 3 years ago would try to punch me, but Frank of today has trained a lot of martial arts since then, so past Frank can take his best shot.
First half yes, second half not so.
Ummm….
https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/browse/trump-everyone-thinks-i-deserve-nobel-prize/vi-AAx1Fsl
I’d like to add this: I didn’t like many of the things Trump said at the press conference, rhapsodizing about what a good leader Kim is, saying he wants what’s best for his people
Then there’s this, which nobody talks about: The president said that he eventually wants to bring all of our troops home. What would stop Kim from biding his time, waiting for that to happen, invade the South, and turn it into a giant concentration camp, like the North is?
Ummm…. “much” and you know it did not start with the White House, and you know the President shifted the focus from empty symbols to real peace in his full answer.
How much are we going to harp on this? If relations with North Korea reach a point where we no longer need fear an insane, rogue, nuclear regime, is anyone going to care that Trump was overly polite in the initial stages?
Trump expressing an inspirational ideal isn’t giving up anything. If Trumps cuts a deal where the US gives up something significant, while getting only promises in return, I’ll be right there criticizing him. There is no evidence of that yet. We should give this a chance.
Rude perhaps, but helpful if it drew attention to the person who started it.
Looks like lots of fanfare for a deal thats worse than even Bill Clinton or George W had agreed to in the past. This pathetic non-deal could have easily been hammered out at low levels and without the Kim worship
Seeing Trump slobber all over the NK despot just makes me appreciate how awesome it was that Reagan stood up to and defeated the Soviets, especially since appeasement is really popular with the public, and even many conservatives.
I apologize for not linking numerous references that can be easily verified by a Google search. Forgive me for still not doing that, as it is a waste of my time, and yours for that matter. Don’t waste your time trying paint a modest Trump. Find better uses of your energy.
I suspect Kim’s model is not the West, nor South Korea, but rather his other neighbor and closest ally: China.
Kim’s father and his generation of advisors may have assumed there were only two options: keep their iron grip on power and remain poor as dirt farmers, or liberalize and lose power. Predictably, they chose power.
Kim has now grown up watching China strike trade deals with the West and grow into an economic giant while the Communist Party has retained its iron grip on power and beaten back the democracy movement. Now there’s a third option on the table: power and wealth. Kim could be thinking to himself “if I can find a way to end this stalemate, end the sanctions, join the WTO and get MFN trading status, I can put all my gulag slaves to work assembling iPhones and I’ll be rich!”
President Trump is supposedly 8 inches taller than Kim. Is Kim wearing shoe inserts?
This is utterly wrong. Clinton gave away the farm to North Korea. Trump has given away nothing. If you don’t keep your criticisms accurately measured, people will ignore them in the future.
America could have tried to move forces into eastern Europe after the War was over. I think Poland, Romania, Hungry, and Czechoslovakia would have been happy to have some Americans and British there like there had been in Austria. But instead, FDR let Stalin have free reign over these countries. Look at Austria, where the Russians were not given an easily consolidated block to occupy? Because of this Austria was able to be saved from the Iron Curtain. Germany ended up divided, and the rest were swallowed up whole. Trusting Stalin at Yalta was a mistake, and much of the hardship of the Cold War was the result of that mistake. In many ways the Cold War was unavoidable, but we could have had better footing for it had FDR not trusted so much to the good faith of the USSR at Yalta.
The thing is, there isn’t a deal yet. Just a mutual commitment to work toward one. That might be nothing, I don’t know. One of the key items to keep an eye on in negotiations is who benefits from delay. So maybe NoKo’s whole nuclear program imploded when that mountain did and this is Kim playing (successfully) for time. That’s one possibility and in that scenario, Trump is being played just like Clinton and Bush were. Or maybe Kim is a new generation and a guy who sees what’s outside his borders and wants to be part of it, and these are the first, slow, tentative steps toward a freer North Korea and a peaceful peninsula. That’s another possibility and in that scenario, Trump is a great statesman and Nobel winner for seeing the opportunity and seizing it. Do you know which it is? Because I honestly don’t.
I think at this point Cautious Skepticism and Cautious Optimism are both legitimate reactions.
I’m sure somewhere on these pages you can point to where you said something similar about flag burning and the NFL players standing for the anthem.
Do you feel the same way about our flag flying with China or Saudi Arabia? Or, maybe… Israel?
Saying we’ll have to wait and see and asking for no more than an opening is hardly a marching band endorsement, but there were no senior people in the Obama Administration with real foreign policy experience, and a lot that lived in the delusional or opportunistic ( I never know which) world of our hard left. In contrast almost everyone surrounding President Trump has long, deep and hard nosed experience. I thought his press conference was just right. We’ve given up nothing and have already gotten movement. Moreover, Kim only knows Trump from his bad hostile press and from Chinese intelligence sources, do you think that he’d seriously believe that a bunch of phony gestures will get him enduring concessions or that in Trump’s face violations of anything agreed to would be clever tactics?
I’m not even sure they’re different reactions. They’re certainly not mutually exclusive.