by William Skink

The obsessive need of the anti-Trump resistance to oppose anything Trump does has created a disturbing space for Democrats to assert their hawkishness. This article in Counterpunch today explains why that is so dangerous:

If more proof was needed to persuade anyone that the Democrats are indeed a war party, it was provided when Senator Chuck Schumer and other Democrat leaders in the Senate engaged in a cynical stunt to stake out a position to the right of John Bolton on the summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un.

The Democrats asserted that the planned summit could only be judged successful if the North Koreans agreed to dismantle and remove all their nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, end all production and enrichment of uranium, dismantle its nuclear weapons infrastructure, and suspend ballistic missile tests.

Those demands would constitute an unconditional surrender on the part of the North Korean leadership and will not happen, and the Democrats know it.

But as problematic as those demands are, here is the real problem that again demonstrates the bi-partisan commitment to war that has been at the center of U.S. imperial policies: If these are the outcomes that must be achieved for the meeting to be judged a success, not only does it raise the bar beyond the level any serious person believes possible, it gives the Trump administration the ideological cover to move toward war. The inevitable failure to force the North Koreans to surrender essentially forecloses all other options other than military conflict. 

From NPR to my liberal friends on Facebook, these talks have been largely criticized as legitimizing a dictator who starves his own people. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that starving people to force political change is SOP (standard operating procedure) for US imperialists. It’s called sanctions, people, and the goal is to create enough misery to trigger a popular revolt.

Over half a million Iraqis died because of sanctions and Madeline Albright infamously said she thought the human price was worth it. In Yemen, with US support, Saudi Arabia is positioned to exacerbate the starving of millions of people as the last port falls to Saudi forces. Millions could die as a direct result of this barbarous war against one of the poorest Middle East nations.

But we’ll just gloss over all that because Trump. Trump is the clear and present danger, right? Even if he is making progress with a nuclear armed North Korea, the resistance must find a way to find fault. It has become pathological.

Don’t get me wrong, there is no altruism coming from Trumpland. I just don’t understand why taking a few steps back from nuclear brinkmanship can’t be applauded.