Trump Punishes South Korea For His Iran Humiliation

The Felon continues to demonstrate on a daily basis his unfitness for office and daily erodes the United States' standing in the world and by the time his misrule ends the nation and the world will be far more unsafe.  Meanwhile, at home medical research has been canceled, health initiatives ended, and environmental protections and safe water and clean air are threatened, in the case of the latter to benefit the fossil fuels lobby.  On the international front, the Felon has no face-saving way to exit from the Iran war that he chose to launch despite warnings that he would face the exact situation that now confronts both the US and the global economy.  And with the Felon, one thing that is certain is that he will never take responsibility for his own actions and foolish decisions.  Someone else is always to blame, be they American citizens accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool rather than admit the Felon's crony who did the work was incompetent to blaming allies for the Felon's own Iran debacle. His ego and narcissism will never let him accept responsibility. The latest target in the Felon's blame someone else effort is South Korea which wisely opted to decline the Felon's after the fact request that South Korea somehow bail the Felon's ass out in Iran. A piece at The Atlantic looks at the Felon's destructive actions:

Last winter, Donald Trump plunged recklessly into war with Iran. The United States is now losing that conflict. Iran remains defiant, much of the world economy is more threatened now than it was six months ago, U.S. military resources are overextended, and munition stores are dangerously depleted. Trump and the United States have suffered one embarrassment after another; last week, he had to sneak away from the region on a backup plane because of a possible assassination threat from Tehran.

And so the [Felon] president of the United States has taken the logical next step: He is punishing South Korea, a loyal American friend, and tempting U.S. enemies to doubt America’s will to defend its allies.

Early Sunday evening, Trump instructed the Defense Department to “substantially reduce” its participation in an annual joint military exercise with the South Koreans. He did this, he said in a post on Truth Social, in part because such activities are expensive, but worse, they are insulting to his friends in North Korea, a country that has been “unthreatening and respectful” while he’s been in office.

More to the point, he complained that the South Koreans have not helped him defeat Iran: While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, “No thanks!”

When Trump makes the effort to say something is “unrelated” to his actions (and then adds a coy question mark) it usually means it is completely related—and probably his central motivation.

Scaling back the exercise is, of course, an insane decision, which does nothing but hurt an ally, and tempt an adversary to think—correctly—that American leadership is feckless. You could be forgiven for wondering why South Korea and the rest of the free world must pay for Donald Trump’s failures. Such confusion is understandable, except that in Trump’s world, every loss, every defeat, is a personal insult. When things go wrong, someone must be held responsible—and that someone is never Donald Trump.

America and the rest of the world are now witnessing a public exhibition of narcissistic rage. Trump embarked on a war for personal glory, and what he got instead was ongoing humiliation. He clearly finds it all unbearable.

Trump both fears and respects the autocrats who rule Russia, China, and North Korea, and so he dares not cross them. Instead, he is seeking to assuage the psychic injury of his loss in Iran—including the American public learning of the shameful conditions to which he has subjected U.S. forces—by kicking America’s allies, the nations he can punish without fear that they will kick him back.

The Iran war was not the president’s failure, you see. Others failed the president. . . . . because Trump is unable to subdue Iran, unable to replenish stocks of U.S. weapons he should never have expended in this war, unable to take care of the service personnel he has put in harm’s way, someone is going to pay. The most convenient target he could find, at least for the moment, was South Korea.

At a better moment in American history, an enraged Congress would step in and demand answers about such dangerous idiocy. They would rush to the White House, talk to the press, hold hearings, and in general act like responsible stewards of American power. Those days, at least among legislators of the president’s party, are long past.

Our allies might for the time being similarly ignore Trump’s tantrums, but they have power and agency of their own, and even now are likely planning for a world in which the Americans are no longer men and women of principle who stand by their word and by their friends.

The Chinese and the Russians and the North Koreas are certain to draw the appropriate lessons from this deranged policy. They have been shown, yet again, that when Trump fails, he hurts those he feels safe hurting. Already, North Korea is dispatching missiles and thousands of soldiers to aid Russia in its war on Ukraine. If a conflict should break out in the Pacific or on the Korean peninsula, or if the war in Europe spreads further West, the world’s dictators might well count on Trump to focus American wrath not on the enemies of the free world, but on the nations that have always pledged to stand side by side with the United States in a mutual defense of freedom.