Weekend discussion by readers.
August 19, 2023
During a week dominated by Trump's fourth indictment (in Georgia), the biggest story was President Bident’s trilateral meeting with Japan and South Korea at Camp David. The meeting was the result of a long-term effort by the Biden administration to encourage a rapprochement between two nations with a history of difficult relations. The summit at Camp David resulted in a new security agreement between the US and two of its most important non-NATO allies. The security agreement is vitally important in a region in which China is expanding its military presence and territorial claims.
The security pact is a really big deal. It would be a capstone foreign policy achievement for any other president. For Biden, it is only the latest success in his slow, steady rehabilitation of US relations with its global allies. It is especially significant given Trump's bizarre “bromance” with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un—which undermined relations with both South Korea and Japan.
The NYTimes published a series of analyses under the headline, The U.S., Japan and South Korea Form Security Pact. (This series of articles should be accessible to all.)
The contrast between Biden’s continuing successes and Trump's increasing legal jeopardy could not be starker. That contrast should give all Americans comfort and satisfaction that the nation is in good hands.
I encourage paying subscribers to share their opinions in the Comments section. As always, please be respectful and “like” worthy comments to advance them to the top for other readers.
Many readers look to the Comments section for inspiration, information, comfort, and hope. Expressing frustration or anger is understandable and healthy. But our task as a community is to lift-up and support one another during difficult times. If you can find a way to include a note of optimism or determination in your comment, your positive message will reach tens of thousands of readers. That is a good use of your time over the weekend!
(Remember, new comments are posted at the bottom of the Comments section (or the bottom of the thread to which you are responding). If your comment seems to “disappear” after you post, look for it at the bottom of the thread or the Comments section.)
After a momentous week, everyone deserves a few moments of respite. But we cannot forget our brothers and sisters in Hawaii. Please continue your generosity and concern for the victims of the wildfires in Hawaii. And let’s not forget our neighbors in Canada who are battling massive wildfires as well.
To readers in the southwestern US, please exercise caution over the next three days as Hurricane/Tropical Storm Hilary makes landfall.
Talk to you on Monday!
I think some people [republicans?] see Biden quietly going about his job, saving the economy and shoring up our economic future. Saving other democratic nations in order to form a stronger world of democracy over the increasingly strident [in voice and action] dictators, citizens with grudges, and people wanting to blame someone for the problems around them.
And they don't see strength, they have the notion bullies are strong, but silent types who do not curry favor, are not blowhards, don't make excuses, well, they must be weak.
We all know better. As Robert said, the stark examples before us; a President who is attempting to mend and is in fact mending the country and by extension the world, versus a small man who lives only for his own glory and gratification but getting it very seriously wrong and illegal to boot-- well what a contrast.
I say we couldn't be luckier with our current President, and must do all in our power to see that he wins the next election. I'm reminded of the Dr. Seuss book title; Oh the places you'll go... when Biden begins thinking up his next agenda, and his next... luckily for us.
This is indeed a big deal. South Korea (and North) were controlled by Japan from 1910-45, in a particularly vicious form of colonialism, in which it was illegal for a Korean to speak Korean, or for children to be taught Korean History (control their history, you control them, where have I heard that recently?). Nearly every Korean family has at least one episode in the family's oral history of some Japanese atrocity. Korean women were turned into the "comfort women" (that the Japanese government, which has among its leaders descendants of the war criminals of World War II that "Big Mac" MacArthur didn't prosecute after the war) and has never accepted responsibility for things like the comfort women or the systematic attempted destruction of Korean society and culture. (Or the Bataan Death March, or the Rape of Nanking, or the atrocities of the Malaya-Burma Railway)
So getting this agreement took a lot of effort. Probably Kim Jong Un's nukes was the only threat that could have brought about the result.