Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Shame we can't ask these 36,574 Americans what THEY think of Donald Trump's photo op




     Thirty-six thousand, five hundred and seventy four Americans died fighting the Korean War, trying to turn back the advancing Communist forces from North Korea, led by Kim Il Sung, whose grandson met with Donald Trump this week.
      I wonder what they would make of our president's photo op? I wonder if they would view it with the light, laughing, give-the-guy-chance air that the president's unflappable supporters manage to maintain, in spite of everything. I wonder how they would view the supposed deal that was made? I wonder how much they would trust the North Koreans? I wonder how they would view insulting our long-time allies, such as Canada, which fought beside us in Korea, and then running to lick the boots of a madman and murderer? I wonder what they would feel about a president so gullible as to celebrate these empty lines as something significant? 
     It's a shame we can't ask them. I sure know what I think. 

12 comments:

  1. Trump has an amazingly open love of dictators.

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  2. "Peace in our time"--80 years ago this coming fall, Neveille Chamberlain was getting off the plane and waving that piece of paper, after his meeting with "Herr Hitler." But His Orangeness probably never cracked a history book, so don't expect him to have any knowledge of that event.

    Less than a year later, Poland, and the start of WWII. Can't help but wonder how much peace we have left in our own time.

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  3. Any tweets from Trump yet about how many people tuned in to watch the BIG handshake? I'm sure they're coming.
    And what's next? Blame South Korea for the war? Or maybe decommission the Korean War Memorial and claim that none of it ever happened. All the Trumpet blowers will instantly become Korean War deniers. Not so far-fetched in Trumplandia.

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  4. It was a cold, wet snow falling on the west end of the Mall. Moving slowly over icy streets I found parking about one hundred yards from the Korean War Memorial. I'd missed it on my first visit and the uncomfortable weather wasn't a deterrent to the recommendation I'd received. Through a ghostly quiet snowfall I approached the oversize statues, almost lifelike, walking up a hill. Snow clinging to our shoulders and heads, I could imagine we were retreating from the Chosen reservoir, me looking over my shoulder like the figures in the grove, checking for stragglers or pursuers. It was the most visceral of my three favorite monuments, conveniently clustered in that area. The Wall most immediate to me, it colored my late teen years and though it didn't affect me as deep as many people around me, I knew a story of two names there which isolated me from the crowd that first day. The Lincoln Memorial sneaks up on you. The crowd is less reverent than the Wall crowd, more tourists moving past, jostling for position. But as you read the words flanking the sitting hero, you understand them better than ever. Reading his second inaugural speech you find yourself removing your hat, embarrassed not to have done it as you crossed the threshold to a cathedral of the better angels, the higher hopes that make America truly great. It pains me writing this that we have sunk to Trumps level and I am back with those Korean vets trying to survive the enemy and the winters bite.

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  5. I remember the night my father woke me and my brother up to inform us our uncle was killed in Korea. I know that he would not be happy.

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  6. It could have been worse.

    john

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  7. The sudden decision to end joint exercises with the South Koreans will cause heartburn in the Pentagon. What Napoleon said about allies -- that he would rather fight them than be one -- suggests difficulty in military operation, particularly when different cultures and languages are involved, that can only be overcome by practice. It was a big concession to the North.


    Tom

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  8. I recall how the original war in Korea got started once the Communists came to the conclusion that the United States did not consider South Korea one of our vital interests. The secretary of state had failed or forgotten to include South Korea in a speech which described the American defense perimeter in Asia to exclude both South Korea and Taiwan. A few months later the tanks were rolling south from North Korea into South Korea. Koreans have got to wonder if Trump is proceeding on the same path by starting to depreciate the military alliance with South Korea by junking the war games. It seems silly to question the cost of B-52s flying from Guam for the games since the cost of a real shooting war would far exceed that. However, no one ever said that Trump was a foreign policy or history expert. I have a special interest because my Dad got the chance to spend quality time patching up people under fire during the Korean War.

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  9. Damn betcha...especially if his remains were not found or were buried in Korea and not repatriated to the U.S. The young husband of my mother's kid sister died almost three years before I was born, in the Battle of the Bulge. He and my aunt had only been married for a couple of years.

    They drafted a lot of guys after D-Day, for the final push across France and Germany. A couple of months of basic training, and then the rookies were handed a rifle, shipped across the pond, and stuck into the front lines as a replacement. Thousands of them were killed before the combat veterans even learned their names.

    My uncle was all of 22.He was first declared MIA, and then KIA the following year. They never found enough of him to bury. Mines and shells will do that.

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  10. One can also ponder what a good many of the soldiers who were killed by Chinese troops would thing about President Nixon visiting China, and meeting with Mao Zedong. And what would the soldiers who died in 'Nam would think about President Bill Clinton visiting North Vietnam. We can also wonder what the victims of human rights violations, perpetrated by the Castros, thought about President Obama visiting Cuba. My best guess is they would hope in the future few if any soldiers throughout the world would share their ghastly fate.

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  11. Your old friend, Conrad Black, has a column online at NRO telling the rest of us what a great job Trump is doing with North Korea. Here's the link: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/donald-trumps-north-korean-policy-succeeding/. Of course, if Black says so it must be wrong. :-)

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