Posted by dino27 on 8/12/2017 12:34:00 PM (view original):
what purpose has been served by trump's fiery rhetoric....plus or minus.
1. north korea.....will it impede their program...no...........did it make them look bad or weak...not in my opinion.....did it risk conflict....imo...yes
2. china - the plus is that china said it would stand aside if nk started conflict.....good to know and good for nk to know if both countries didnt already know.
3. south korea - trump scared the bejeezuz out of them.
4. quam - ditto
5. our other allies - ditto
6. trump's debased - they probably liked it.
net - the risk of conflict outweighs china's public statement which both nk and usa probably already knew or could get in a more diplomatic way.
That's about it and I'm sure you're right about NK and America already knowing China's position. Trump also helpfully predicted that Guam would see a yuge ratings boost (I think he said something about tourism increasing tenfold).
Here's what
David Brooks, a conservative writer who's actually sane, said last night on PBS:
Listen, there’s been a consensus of how to deal with this extremely knotty problem. And that is, at least on the rhetorical level, the North Korean regime is extremely fiery, extremely insecure, sometimes hysterical.
And when you’re around somebody who’s screaming and unstable, the last thing you want to do is add to the instability with your own unstable, hysterical rhetoric.
And so most administrations, Republican and Democrats, when the North Koreans say they’re going to Seoul into a lake of fire, whatever their rhetoric is, have just ignored it and relied on some underlying sense that the North Koreans don’t want to commit national suicide.
Donald Trump has gone the other way. Now, I think that is still — that sense that neither party wants to go into a war is still there. But the psychological probabilities that you’re going to enter into some August 1914 miscalculation certainly go up when both people are screaming at the top of their lungs.
Who would argue with that?
I mean, aside from Trump's "debased" (well put!).