John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY KURT NIMMO IN CHECKPOINT ASIA
“Trump Replaces Bolton With Fringe Neocon [Charles Kupperman]
“A Bolton sidekick is the acting National Security Advisor”
“It was too good to be true. For a moment, I actually thought Trump had come to his senses and decided to scour the neocons from his administration”
Far too many have taken encouragement from the departure of Bolton.
The problem has always been Trump, not Bolton.
Trump doesn't even listen to other people, Bolton or anyone else. He has one of the world's most severe cases of attention deficit disorder, apart from a number of other mental and emotional disorders.
From another source, we learn that Trump, in his various post-firing rambling communications, claims Bolton was “holding me back on Venezuela and Cuba.” Good God, what does that mean for those poor countries?
Bolton left, I think, far less over policy differences than some form of Trumpian lèse-majesté.
Bolton either tried to talk too much or he was not quite attentive enough at some point as the Chosen One rambled on about something.
It is Trump himself, for example, who has established an inappropriately close relationship with lobbyists and apologists for Israel as well as the thoroughly disreputable Prime minister of that country. Trump’s entire anti-diplomatic, aggressive behavior towards Iran derives from those relationships and has nothing to do with America’s own genuine interests.
With Bolton’s departure, Netanyahu already has issued Trump some polite public marching orders about not letting down his guard towards Iran.
(It's amazing how little our press and politicians react to a foreign head of government publicly telling a President what to do while they keep jumping up and down, beating their chests, about someone in Russia having run a few crummy, ineffective ads on Facebook in 2016.)
The Iranians have long made it clear that there can only be talks between equals. They won't talk at all while being terrorized.
Trump may contemplate - a strange word to use for him - some easing of sanctions for talks, but the important word there is "some."
I believe that will get him precisely nowhere.
"Some" is too much for Netanyahu and too little for Rouhani, who, I’m sure sees partial terror still as terror.
And Trump has damaged trust and faith in the United States by arbitrarily ripping up a working treaty, one that included many other parties as signatories.
Why would anyone proceed to talk about yet another treaty, and one with all kinds of new demands?
