Quote :

"f Trump got actual concessions or worked with KJU on human rights or was able to get information on the depth of the NK nuclear program I’d give him credit for that."

Trump does not deserve any praise for this, he's done the bare minimum. South Korea and North Korea are the two parties we should be focused on. I know it's painful to hear, but what the US wants is absolutely irrelevant. We should be a mediator (if that is what Korea wants), not a negotiator.

[Edited on June 12, 2018 at 12:31 PM. Reason : applies to the below post also]

6/12/2018 12:24:47 PM

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/opinion/trump-kim-summit-north-korea.html

It sure looks as if President Trump was hoodwinked in Singapore.

Trump made a huge concession — the suspension of military exercises with South Korea. That’s on top of the broader concession of the summit meeting itself, security guarantees he gave North Korea and the legitimacy that the summit provides his counterpart, Kim Jong-un.

Within North Korea, the “very special bond” that Trump claimed to have formed with Kim will be portrayed this way: Kim forced the American president, through his nuclear and missile tests, to accept North Korea as a nuclear equal, to provide security guarantees to North Korea, and to cancel war games with South Korea that the North has protested for decades.

In exchange for these concessions, Trump seems to have won astonishingly little. In a joint statement, Kim merely “reaffirmed” the same commitment to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula that North Korea has repeatedly made since 1992

6/12/2018 12:25:31 PM

the six party talks had stronger language, nothing in this agreement is new. there was also no mention of human rights nor steps towards comprehensive, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization (CVID) which is supposed to be the international goal.

6/12/2018 12:29:53 PM

it was two years before they agreed on verifiable denuclearization in the six party talks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-party_talks#Timeline

6/12/2018 12:37:34 PM

Remeber the people who blasted Obama for even considering meeting with dictators? How many are praising Trump for this? (basically all of the Fox ews pundits)

[Edited on June 12, 2018 at 12:48 PM. Reason : ]

6/12/2018 12:47:08 PM

https://nowthisnews.com/videos/politics/fox-news-different-reactions-regarding-negotiations-with-north-korea

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/pavvy9/north-korea-broadcast-an-opera-to-distract-people-from-the-trump-kim-summit

6/12/2018 1:28:28 PM

https://twitter.com/gop/status/1006589446962204683?s=21

Lol how do you even combat this unlimited bad faith?

6/12/2018 1:37:09 PM

Quote :

"Trump made a huge concession — the suspension of military exercises with South Korea. That’s on top of the broader concession of the summit meeting itself, security guarantees he gave North Korea and the legitimacy that the summit provides his counterpart, Kim Jong-un."

If your country had been subject to a massive bombing campaign 70 years ago that flattened all of your cities and killed 10% of your population, with more civilian deaths than soldiers, what would your reaction be to your attackers continuing to perform war game simulations aimed at you along your border? Would you want to engage in talks with them about disarming yourself? Keep in mind that your two previous attackers liked bombing your country so much that when they ran out of buildings to bomb, they started bombing dams in flood controlled agricultural areas so that the rice crops would die and your people would starve.

Similarly, how do you expect your negotiations to go when you delegitimize the leader of North Korea and put him at an increased risk of a coup or revolution? Are you certain that the next person that takes over is going to be any better?

6/12/2018 1:57:37 PM

Your response is not surprising at all.

(and obviously would have been quite different if the exact same thing happened, say, three years ago)

[Edited on June 12, 2018 at 2:11 PM. Reason : ]

6/12/2018 2:11:00 PM

He’s right though. And your complaints about right wing media apply equally to center-left media.

6/12/2018 2:15:16 PM

Directionally possibly (though both CNN/MSNBC are far more open to real right wing commentary like asshole Hugh Hewitt than Fox is) but if you’re trying to compare the degrees between center/left and right wing media you are making an EXTREMELY bad faith argument.

[Edited on June 12, 2018 at 2:25 PM. Reason : ^^ he’s never met an autocrat he wouldn’t defend obviously ]

6/12/2018 2:24:43 PM

Both sides have flipped their message. Both sides have their own clear agenda which supersedes fair reporting. Fox is worse only because they are overtly inflammatory.

Also it’s fun to compare eleusis’s post to Chomsky’s thoughts on Korea (which mirror the current SK president btw)

https://www.opendemocracy.net/noam-chomsky-david-barsamian/world-in-peril-trump-iran-north-korea-Republican

[Edited on June 12, 2018 at 2:29 PM. Reason : .]

6/12/2018 2:28:48 PM

And for what it’s worth I’ve seen very few pundits and columnists take the view that Trump shouldn’t have created dialogue with NK. Quite the opposite actually.

The criticisms have lied with the fact that nothing has really changed and it was set up in a way to be a glorified photo op.

6/12/2018 2:30:35 PM

Talk about bad faith...everything is a photo op and we’re in the very beginning of the talks. And call it a concession or whatever, but ending the joint exercises is a great first step.

To answer your earlier question: how do we counter bad faith arguments from Fox?

Wrong way: Focus on the desires of US military think tanks, criticize everything about the talks, claim they are going to fail entire time.

Right way: Shift the entire message away from the US and focus on Korea. They accomplished this, we are only allowing it.

6/12/2018 2:41:10 PM

Quote :

"Pence told Senate GOP that military exercises in Korea will continue, per Sen. Gardner"

lol and this is why this whole argument is stupid. We never will have any fucking clue what to argue about because the president is a habitual liar.

You know what, I don’t think you’re entirely wrong. Far from it. I just have no faith whatsoever in Trump or his fan base treating anything with any sincerity.

And what Pence just said makes me think this entire line of conversation is pointless.

[Edited on June 12, 2018 at 2:56 PM. Reason : X]

6/12/2018 2:54:18 PM

well honestly i could be wrong and maybe the correct strategy is to call trump a moron who will clearly fail. then he can own the libs by ending the korean war.

https://twitter.com/samstein/status/1006613004715216897?s=21

NEW: Pence’s press sec tells @lachlan that reports he said military exercises with Korea will continue are “false”

[Edited on June 12, 2018 at 3:09 PM. Reason : .]

6/12/2018 3:02:18 PM

Quote :

"Both sides have flipped their message."

The differences between the sides will become apparent IF the negotiations ever proceed past this nothingburger and an actual substantive plan is produced.

The Iran Deal was detailed AF, multi-lateral, and had clear milestones that everyone agreed to meet. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but the main criticism that I heard from the right was “ITSA BAD DEAL!!!.” And that was it. The Right, and right wing media, and Israel, and Russia, went to the mat to destroy that deal and, as I see it, they barely had a legitimate criticism of it.

If an actual “plan” is produced by Trump-Kim, I suspect the criticism from the center or left will be based on the details of the plan. If trump somehow pulled something similiar to the Iran Deal out of his ass, do you really think the center would just knee jerk to claiming the deal sucks without an actual argument? I don’t think so.

6/12/2018 7:00:03 PM

https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron

30 years and 20+ incidents where NK agreed to not pursue nuclear weapons

Main thing that’s different this time is it’s Kim Jong Un, and SK seems to have normalized relationship as a top priority— which are big differences.

There’s a lot we don’t know, but other than some photo ops we aren’t farther along than we’ve been in the past

6/12/2018 7:40:27 PM

Quote :

"Correct me if I’m wrong here, but the main criticism that I heard from the right was “ITSA BAD DEAL!!!.” And that was it."

All you may have wanted to hear was that. What people were actually saying is that the deal was frontloaded with cash to Iran before getting any verification that Iran would even comply with the agreement, did nothing to dismantle centrifuges or reactor sites, had no authority to inspect certain military sites, and provided Iran with the ability to delay inspections of weapons sites for up to 24 days. Those were some pretty hefty concessions to give to a country that we knew had lied about their nuclear weapons program repeatedly in the past and had cheated previous nuclear weapons inspections in the past when they received prior warning.

If the deal is so weak that the only way to confirm it's working is through HUMINT and SIGINT, then why not keep relying on those and leave the sanctions in place? I'll be equally pissed at Trump if he gets us into a deal with North Korea that doesn't involve anytime, anywhere inspections or doesn't gradually scale back sanctions as we see verifiable proof that North Korea is holding up their end of the bargain.

6/12/2018 10:23:37 PM

You’re proving my point. Most of your criticisms are objectively untrue:

-The deal requires the dismantling of 2/3 of their installed centrifuge capacity.
-the Arak reactor was permanently altered to stop enrichment
-the IAEA has 24/7 access to any site they suspect of enrichment activities with only 24 HOUR notice
-the 24 day inspection is only triggered after Iran denies access to a site (to give time to form a joint commission). In other words, we will already know they are hiding something if they trigger that commission. In fact it’s an enforcement rather than an inspection at that point and would be considered nearly non compliant with the agreement.
-Any Deal, no matter how it’s structured, would be verified with intelligence. That’s not even a criticism.

So basically you are left with the fact that the deal gave Iran back some of its cash, which is in fact a legitimate criticism. But the lifting of sanctions (and unfreezing of assets) was the carrot that got Iran to sign on. It’s hard to imagine the deal happening with out some of that incentive.

https://armscontrolcenter.org/the-real-facts-on-the-iran-nuclear-negotiations/

6/13/2018 6:23:06 AM

Anyone on here lapping up Trumps “mission accomplished” bravado or are we in wait and see?

6/13/2018 7:34:42 AM

Quote :

""Correct me if I’m wrong here, but the main criticism that I heard from the right was “ITSA BAD DEAL!!!.” And that was it.""

You forgot the criticism that a black democratic president arranged it, but basically yes.

I've also heard that 'America' didn't agree to any deal since the Iran Deal wasn't a treaty.

6/13/2018 8:33:02 AM

http://inthesetimes.com/article/21210/liberals-are-attacking-trump-from-the-right-on-north-korea.-heres-why-they

6/13/2018 6:28:30 PM

Did that author just wake up from a coma two months ago? She should really rewind the tape and review what “attacking from the right” actually looks like:

6/14/2018 5:59:39 AM

Apparently not loving that Trump is heaping praise on KJU is the same as rooting for war.

[Edited on June 14, 2018 at 7:27 AM. Reason : It’s a straw man]

6/14/2018 7:27:15 AM

Nothing about the far left trumpist faction makes sense

6/14/2018 8:31:14 AM

Lol, while the picture/video of Trump saluting the NK general is going to be a hit for NK propoganda can we not make a huge deal of it like the right did with Obama? It was clearly just awkwardness..

6/14/2018 9:50:12 AM

Did any of you actually read the article? Don’t think so. It’s amazing how desperate you are to bootlick centrists who give absolutely no shits about the needs of Koreans, or yours for that matter.

[Edited on June 14, 2018 at 10:03 AM. Reason : .]

6/14/2018 10:01:16 AM

Who are you arguing with? Who is arguing against peace? This is a straw man that keeps getting set up because MSNBC tries to both sides the fuck out of everything and puts on awful neocons like Hewitt and Frum. If they are attacking Trump from the right that’s because.... they are to his right. It has nothing to do with anyone in this thread.

Literally all I am saying is that I’m ok with diplomacy even with a brutal regime like KJU but I don’t like the way our president always seems to have a massive crush on autocrats and dictators.

(Fully prepares for the obvious rebuttal of “America has always done this” like that is some gotcha to anyone here)

** in any case it’s time to focus on the important thing — emails. Which will be the news cycle the rest of the week)

[Edited on June 14, 2018 at 10:17 AM. Reason : X]

6/14/2018 10:14:24 AM

Well if you read even the first few paragraphs of that article before criticizing it you’d understand. It was mainly aimed at TerdFerguson.

It also contains an interview with a South Korean activist who shares the view of the author.

[Edited on June 14, 2018 at 10:24 AM. Reason : .]

6/14/2018 10:21:05 AM

That article is trying to force the “liberals want war with N. Korea” narrative so fucking hard, and I just don’t see it. Liberals were critical, you could even make the case that they rushed to criticism too quickly, but to accuse them of war-mongering in this instance is complete bullshit. I really hope the alt-left and alt-right keep spiking the football on Trump’s “Deal.” I’m still operating under the assumption that everything Trump touches eventually turns to shit, this will too. Once it blows up in Trumps face, and Trump starts cranking up the nuclear war tweets and agitating his base, the alt-left will tack back to calling liberals feckless and spineless because their criticisms of Trump’s position are too even handed.

6/14/2018 11:32:17 AM

alt left. lol. you’re off the deep end my man.

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/392081-dem-senators-move-to-halt-potential-us-troop-withdrawal-from-s-korea

[Edited on June 14, 2018 at 11:39 AM. Reason : .]

6/14/2018 11:37:17 AM

So I’m supposed to believe that Chris Murphy and Tammy Duckworth are now war mongers because they want Trump to consult the pentagon before shuffling troops around? Rewind back to October and they were two of the main sponsors (with Bernie Sanders btw) for a bill requiring congressional approval for any military action in Korea in an effort to reign in Trumps saber rattling tweets.
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/new-bill-no-war-in-north-korea-without-congressional-authorization

6/14/2018 12:05:10 PM

Where are you getting this "war monger" talk from? Democrats aren't warmongering, they're just trying to tank the discussions because it hurts them in elections.

Duckworth and Murphy are posturing.

6/14/2018 12:08:53 PM

The suggestion in the “In these Times” article is that anyone not properly celebrating Trump’s big break through is inviting war with DPRK and hates S. Koreans.

ALL dem bills introduced or sponsored right now are basically posturing given the way McConnel and Ryan run things.

6/14/2018 12:18:56 PM

That's not the suggestion at all. Neither the author nor the interviewee gave Trump any praise. It is entirely focused on how liberals seem intent on derailing the process. A process that is going well by the standards of South Koreans. It's some real White Man's Burden bullshit.

In fact, they called him dangerous and said it's in our best interest, for that reason, to ensure this succeeds.

Quote :

"Sarah: Given how volatile and dangerous Trump is, it seems to me that if you don’t trust him, you should do everything you can to make sure that he doesn’t derail the peace process. This is the same person who casually threatened to annihilate the entire Korean peninsula with nuclear weapons, yet now some Democrats are pressuring him from the right. Do you think this is dangerous? Christine: It is very dangerous to pressure Trump to be hardline. We have to put all of our efforts into ensuring this goes well and is not undermined. Look who's in Trump’s cabinet: John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and tomorrow is the confirmation meeting for Harry Harris, the former head of Pacific Command—a military man with a hardline position against China and North Korea, now likely the new ambassador to South Korea. If things don't go well, we are in an incredibly dangerous situation. We saw that Lindsey Graham ask the seven Democratic senators to join him in authorizing the use of military force against North Korea if this process does not succeeed. "

[Edited on June 14, 2018 at 12:31 PM. Reason : .]

6/14/2018 12:30:04 PM

Quote :

"Trump on Kim Jong Un: “He speaks and his people sit up in attention. I want my people to do the same.”"

Are we allowed to say a guy who either doesn’t understand what North Korea is or absolutely admires authoritarians and dictators doesn’t always deserve the benefit of the doubt? Or is that rooting for to diplomacy to fail?

Are we allowed to talk about his very obvious fascist desires or is that “why we got Trump?”

[Edited on June 15, 2018 at 8:58 AM. Reason : X]

6/15/2018 8:56:33 AM

permission granted, NYM

https://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/1007611756355735552

[Edited on June 15, 2018 at 11:20 AM. Reason : .]

6/15/2018 11:14:34 AM

^^ it was just a prank bro

6/15/2018 1:53:45 PM

It this true? I don't know

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/bj3e9d/satellite-images-north-korea-denuclearization

6/27/2018 9:55:25 AM

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-brashly-declares-not-now-war-north-korea-132308078.html

7/3/2018 2:02:52 PM

^^ fake libtard news at it again POTUS said they're no longer a threat. TAKE IT TO THE BANK!

7/3/2018 3:57:16 PM

Pompeo over there today to see all the wonderful progress they've made putting missiles into general production.

Oh wait...we wanted them to DEnuclearize? Oops.

7/5/2018 8:05:51 AM

He just loves being friends with dictators... and he has a new buddy now, that's all he cares about.

7/5/2018 10:52:24 AM

Fucking amateurs

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/north-korea-shatters-trump-s-boastful-assurances-easy-path-denuclearization-n889596

Trump is a falsely boastful child, and that's all he will ever be.

7/8/2018 2:29:07 AM

Why do you hate peace?

Anything but praise and glory upon Dead Leader for agreeing to meet with KJU is imperalistic war drums.

[Edited on July 8, 2018 at 4:21 PM. Reason : Our foreign policy is being hacked to pieces by DPRK if you read the latest BB piece about it ]

7/8/2018 4:20:32 PM

Quote :

"Dead Leader"

Ahahaha

Freudian slip or deep-state autocorrect?

7/8/2018 4:25:47 PM

7/8/2018 4:26:46 PM

Lol autocorrect from the deep state

7/8/2018 4:38:11 PM

Well it would be great if at least one of those Dear Leaders failed to wake up tomorrow morning thus turning into a Dead Leader.

I think a worldwide poll would result in a 20:80 split, and we all know who is who

7/8/2018 6:43:37 PM