ALL HAIL PRESIDENT TRUMP

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deathflower wrote:

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j33bus wrote:

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deathflower wrote:

Donald Trump deserves a little credit for North and South Korean peace agreement but China’s agreement to the North Korea sanctions was far more important.

Apparently Moon Jae-In disagrees and thinks Trump should get a peace prize for all this.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/30/asia/south-korea-trump-nobel-prize-intl/index.html

So I'm gonna go with maybe he did more than we thought.

Moon Jae-In is being humble when he say he doesn't deserve Nobel Peace Prize, and Trump does. Trump doesn't understand the context and Asian culture, Neither does CNN.

Better ask the Norwegian Nobel Committee members, I will believe it when they say yes. Moon Jae-In saying Trump deserve a prize doesn't do a shit. And I say I deserve a chocolate cake.

I believe he's just being humble when he says he doesn't deserve it, he certainly does, but I don't think he would just say Trump does if he doesn't, Moon Jae-In has a much better perspective on how much work Trump has done than pretty much anyone else in the world. As for the Nobel Committee, these are the same people who gave Obama a prize for nothing.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

My idea of peacemaking is not simply nuking another country off the face of the earth if they do something we don't like. That's just vulgar violence.

My idea of peacemaking is conveying the impression that we will nuke another country off the face of the earth if they do something we don't like (and that we have good reason not to). That's a threat, and threats are more about perception than they're about reality.

Naturally, the danger in any threat is the possibility that it might not be believed (or that it might be believed but seen as an acceptable loss, but we can rule that out here). If this happens, it's difficult to be seen as credible in the future without carrying out the promise of retaliation made yesterday. I understand that's what you're worried about, because you've dehumanized the leadership of North Korea. You see the government of North Korea as entirely subservient to a madman who is, by virtue of his insanity, blessed with an inability to fear consequence and thus an immunity to intimidation.

Interesting, don't you think, that that's pretty much how you view Donald Trump? But even if Donald Trump is crazy, he possesses no magic immunity to the human condition; like everyone else, the Donald rationalizes his decisions as pursuing some greater good within his own self-constructed worldview. When will you realize that by making monsters out of such people, you make them as gods?

No one on this planet or in all of history, no matter how evil, is so far gone that, if you walked in their shoes, you couldn't see how they believe that what you call evil is actually good. I thought that was the whole point of Yagami's character in Death Note - by which I mean Thomas Aquinas.

Isn't it interesting that so many parallels can be drawn between Trump and Kim Jong Un? I remember one of my favorite (for a given definition of 'favorite') comments from overseas when Trump stole the election. It was from a German, who said something to the effect of "I see the United States has elected a megalomaniac with silly hair to lead them. Let us know how that goes. We don't recommend it." Between Kim, Trump, Duterte down in thew Phillipines, a couple others here and there, I'm starting to wonder if 'flaming madman' is the new vogue for world leaders.

Nevertheless. The government of North Korea is far more subservient to Kim than the government of the U.S. is to Trump, because Trump can have anyone who displeases him fired while Kim can have anyone who displeases him shot, next to their entire families. Whether Kim is a clownshoes batshit madman or simply a psycho/sociopath in a 'lousy situation' is sort of immaterial. North Korea literally deifies the Kim bloodline, and he can get away with just about anything in his people's eyes through a combination of that deific status and the ability to say "THE AMERICANS DID IT! DX"

The proof is kinda right there for people to see. Nobody's really worried that the U.S. is going to suddenly start nuking half the planet in a fit of spastic, Apocalyptic pique. Everybody is worried Kim will do just that, because his instability and his hostility to virtually everyone and everything that isn't Korea has been made plain over and over again.

I cannot fathom why the man is suddenly playing nicey-nice now that he's managed to demonstrate nuclear capability. I cannot figure out what his game is here, especially given his constant rhetoric about the DPRK's nuclear capabilities being 'more precious to it than life itself'. There is Something Hinky going on over there, and I almost want some Ghostbusters to head to North Korea and see if the man is legitimately possessed. If he is? Maybe they can make sure he stays that way. This is indeed a historic moment...but if I were Moon, I would absolutely not be standing down any missile defenses right now. Distantly, from the safety of my work cubicle in the U.S.? This feels more like somebody's being set up for a sucker punch than it does people truly striving towards peace.

Anyways. As to the rest of the thread...

Part of me wonders where all this "he won, get over it and support him" attitude is coming from, and where it was during the Obama years when everyone in a red shirt was working their asses off to actively sabotage The Man Who Won. You can't really have it both ways, folks - and part of the intrinsic rights package of any U.S. citizen is the right to peaceful protest. I do not have to actively support the President simply because he's the President. I don't live in a country where that sort of slavish devotion is required. Yet.

My old sociology teacher once said "you respect the office, not the man in it". That's very sage advice indeed, especially when the man in the office does not respect the office. I can respect the office of President while believing the man currently inhabiting it is besmirching that office horribly, and if I were placed face to face with Trump, that respect for the office (and my desire to keep my current job, given what companies do to anyone who publicly lets Trump have his well-deserved what-fors) would induce me to say, quite simply, "I have nothing to say to you."

You aren't sure why north Korea is playing nice all of a sudden?

Probably because Trump threatened them, and pressured China into pressuring them. China pressure is probably the main key component.

Kim went and met with Chinese leadership right before this happened, remember?

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Khoranth wrote:

Kim went and met with Chinese leadership right before this happened, remember?

In re: China: I agree with some (and disagree with most) of the criticisms about Trump. For his part, it is important to note, that all Trump has to do is tweet the name of a Chinese industry and it loses investors. Trump doesn’t even have to do anything. For its part, China can dish out tariffs all they want; it’s futile. They cannot afford to lose access to US scrap yards, and they cannot take the hits that we can. Humbling.

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1453R wrote:

Part of me wonders where all this "he won, get over it and support him" attitude is coming from, and where it was during the Obama years

I lived by that code (acting with decorum) for eight years while Obama got all nazi cop on the world. Tended not to openly bash his character while he was in office. He was still my president; now he’s not. His iterative fumbling speech was cute. Hmm, yup, that’s about all the disrespect you’ll likely get from me.

The policies though. Jesus Christ. You can say the words “drone strike” but can you internalize their meaning? Let me lube the mind sock for you: “We know where you are at all times, there is no place to hide, and our army of flying robots can extinct four generations of your family at any moment. Behave.” People criticize the US for playing world police, yet in the next breath praise Obama. Weird.

More irony: All the while the left was condemning the right for... you got it! Exactly what they’re doing right now. That’s the reality of such extremely polarized partisan politics, that people can only say with certainty 50% of the time whose ass their head is stuck in.

this thread is making me laugh.

So many lefties completely incapable of even admitting to themselves the reality of what trump has done for the koreas haha.

I honestly believe "Trump Derangement Syndrome" will become a proven new psychological disorder soon, on the books in countries everywhere. Psychiatrists treating such people afflicted by it.

#TrumpWonGetOverIt

It's harder to bash Obama's character than it is to bash Trump's because Obama has character. Say what one will about his policies (and people do, all the time) - the man approached his position with boundless respect, dignity, and consideration. Trump is oh for three on that count.

Is it impolitic of me to castigate the man while he occupies the office? Yeah, okay, I'll cop to that. But the people who dismiss any/all criticisms of Trump with "aww, it's just more Trump Derangement Syndrome!" are hardly more politic, ne? Neither side can claim a moral high ground there, but one of these two 'sides' most recent President was not a raging hyper-antagonistic jackwad who spends all his time deliberately provoking people on Twitter instead of being a President, hm?

As for drone strikes? I do not and never have understood the terror and disgust with them. Is it any worse to say "we have one of the most powerful standing armies in the world on top of multiple branches of elite special forces - piss us off and men who've trained their entire adult lives to find you and kill you will do what they've been trained to do"? Either way, the U.S. is threatening effectively uncounterable force against a target vastly less capable than it is. Who cares if it's drone-delivered missile strikes or commando raids? Not like we haven't been blasting battlefields with airstrikes and artillery for decades anyways, the United States' entire warfighting methodology boils down to "take control of the skies, then use that control to drop bombs on anything that bothers us".

Drones are just another weapon. One well-suited to certain types of engagement and poorly suited to others. Obama made extensive use of drone strikes in the Middle East because they're a particularly effective weapon against the type of enemies we were fighting over there. Against a Russia, or some other firstish-world country that has effective anti-air defenses or other ways to contest our control of the sky? We'll probably get almost no mileage out of drones save as high-altitude recon units, and even then.

There's no practical difference between a highly computerized aircraft with a pilot strapped into the front of it and a highly computerized aircraft with a pilot sitting in a control van in the back lines, and precious little difference between those and a highly computerized aircraft whose pilot is the engineer programming its pre-mission parameters.

I’m on my way out for work, so briefly:

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1453R wrote:

As for drone strikes? I do not and never have understood the terror and disgust with them. Is it any worse to say "we have one of the most powerful standing armies in the world on top of multiple branches of elite special forces

Yes. It is the difference between looking your enemy in the eye, and never seeing the high yield explosive that could, if it wanted to, any time it wants to, hit you in the eye. It creates a psychological prison that breeds even more hatred and contempt in your enemy’s hearts, and in turn, breeds even more enemies.

When you remove the human element from war, your enemies are no longer human, and your wars lose their greatest deterring cost. So yes, emphatically yes, it is much worse. Remember, Mattis sent the artillary home because it would have been unfair; that wasn’t just bravado, that was respect for his position as apex predator.

It takes a special kind of sociopath to develop such a fetish for drone strikes.

It also takes a special kind of sociopath to send your own citizens to fight, kill, and die in countries far away because it's "more sporting" that way, and because it's somehow less moral to utilize remote weaponry than to "pay the cost of war".

Again - drones are a weapon. So is heavier ground-based artillery. So are manned aircraft. So are soldiers, in the military strategic sense. Each weapon has things it's good at and things it sucks at. An effective and efficient military commander with a proper respect for the value of his soldiers' lives will use the best weapon he has for any given job. If that means sending infantry to storm and take control of some place because no weapon in the world can take and hold ground as well as men with rifles can, then that's what he does. If that means utilizing drone delivered strikes to damage his enemies' infrastructure, destroy key targets or eliminate specific enemy actors because those enemies are poor at dealing with drones but are significantly better at handling infantry strikes? Then a good commander busts out the drones.

If you think people will Hate Less(TM) if they're killed by infantry trained and equipped vastly in excess of what they can field themselves rather than by drones, then you're batty. The folks we were fighting in the Middle East made hatred a way of life. They raised their children to hate. They baked hatred into their warped version of their religion. They ate hatred, they slept in it, they breathed it, they built their entire culture around hatred. Their whole lives are devoted to hatred. You can't make those kind of people Hate Less(TM).

The only thing you can do is erase them, so their hatred dies with them. If that takes drones? So be it. They wouldn't hesitate for an instant to use drones against us if they had them, so why extend people who consider hostage taking, living shields, and terrorism (as in the old, actual, official definition, not the modern diffusing of the word) to be valid tactics any mercy?

Stoop to terror tactics, and you've earned nothing but the most efficient execution we can deliver to you.

The reason people are against fighting a war with robots is: your are more likely to go to war, since you just lose money, not human lives.

Plus the robots Will turn on you, eventually...

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Khoranth wrote:

The reason people are against fighting a war with robots is: your are more likely to go to war, since you just lose money, not human lives.

How many wars, pseudo-wars, war-like conflicts, or Other Such junk have we been in, either as a primary belligerent or in support of our allies or NATO/UN efforts?

Does the Human Cost(C) of war seem like it's deterring wars to you?

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Khoranth wrote:

Plus the robots Will turn on you, eventually...

Oh, please. The Robot Uprising is an Internet meme, not a serious concern. Even if you accept that a belligerent A.I. would seek to eradicate the species the moment it's created, such an entity would hardly need us to build weapons for it ahead of time. It could build its own just fine, or much more efficiently just paralyze key nodes of our electronic infrastructure and bring down human civilization without a single shot fired in a matter of days. Skynet is a movie, not a realistic scenario. Any A.I. that's serious about human extinction would do it via biological agents anyways, not via a vast, resource-intensive and exceptionally inefficient army of killbots, stolen or otherwise. Those killbots are made of stuff the A.I. could use to do more worthwhile things with.