Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Steemit.com,
Off the top of my head I have a hard time thinking of anything sleazier than smearing peace talks in order to gain partisan political points, but that has indeed been the theme of the last few days when it comes to the Singapore summit.
Liberal pundits everywhere have been busily circulating the narrative that Kim Jong-Un "played" Trump by getting him to temporarily halt military drills in exchange for suspended nuclear testing. It was the most fundamental beginning of peace negotiations and a slight deescalation in tensions on the Korean Peninsula, but the way they talk about it you'd think Kim had taken off from Singapore in Air Force One with the keys to Fort Knox and Melania on his lap.
I'm not sure how far up the military-industrial complex's ass one's head needs to be to think that one single step toward peace is a gigantic take-all-the-chips win for the impoverished North Korea, but many of Trump's political enemies are taking it even further.
Senate Democrats have introduced a bill to make it more difficult for Trump to withdraw US troops from South Korea, because while you can always count on Capitol Hill to make it incredibly easy for a president to deploy military personnel around the globe, giving that same office the power to bring troops home is a completely different matter.
Surprising no one, MSNBC's cartoon children's program The Rachel Maddow Show took home the trophy for jaw-dropping, shark-jumping ridiculousness with an eighteen-minute Alex Jones impression claiming that the chief architect of the Korean negotiations was none other than (and if you can't guess whose name I'm going to write once we get out of these parentheses I deeply envy your ignorance on this matter) Vladimir Putin.
Saner voices have been pushing back against this madness, none in my opinion more lucidly than South Korea-born peace activist Christine Ahn in an interview with Sarah Lazare for In These Times, who discussed how "Trump’s proven willingness to turn on a dime and engage in dangerous brinkmanship with North Korea" makes it "especially reckless for self-professed liberals to pressure the president to be more confrontational."
"It is very dangerous to pressure Trump to be hardline," Ahn said. "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."
Ahn makes the case that people who most distrust Trump should be the most eager to see him strike a peace deal,...