CommentsBELL VIEW--Remember when George W. Bush said that establishing democracy in Iraq would cause a domino effect in the Middle East – like pushing a giant re-set button?
That idea sounded too simplistic to me at the time – even though the only information I had access to came from the mainstream press. Compared to Trump’s pronouncement on North Korea – that we can all basically sleep easy now that Trump has eliminated the nuclear threat – Bush’s Middle East conversion theory sounds as rock solid as the Treaty of Versailles.
Yet everywhere I turn I see people suggesting that Trump may just be on to something. Paul Ryan, for example, said “The status quo was not working with North Korea. The president should be applauded for disrupting the status quo.”
Can we just hold off on the applause for a few minutes?
But it’s not just hacks like Paul Ryan applauding Trump’s bluster. George Monbiot, in The Guardian¸ tells usTrump was right and the rest of the G7 were wrong on NAFTA. According to Monbiot, Trump got it right when he told the rest of the G7 that NAFTA should contain a sunset clause after 5 years. Citing Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man, Monbiot argues that virtually every law should expire of its own accord at least every generation. While that sounds great in theory, I can’t say I’d want to live in a world where every law – for example, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, the National Labor Relations Act – not to mention the Constitution – were renegotiated by the yahoos we have running the government today.
But – without taking an opinion on the pluses or minuses of NAFTA – let’s take a look at what Mr. Monbiot finds most offensive about the Treaty:
The rules [contained in NAFTA] grant opaque panels of corporate lawyers, meeting behind closed doors, supreme authority over the courts and parliaments of its member states. A BuzzFeed investigation revealed they had been used to halt criminal cases, overturn penalties incurred by convicted fraudsters, allow companies to get away with trashing rain forests and poisoning villages, and, by placing foreign businesses above the law, intimidate governments into abandoning public protections
Does anyone in his right mind think Trump – when he smashes diplomatic norms and shoots from the hip – has any intention of opposing the types of abuses described in the paragraph above?
Overturning criminal cases, helping out convicted fraudsters, and trashing and poisoning the environment are virtually explicit policies of the Trump administration. Can we all agree that sending a bull into a china shop never actually works out for the best? That’s particularly true then the bull is a mobbed-up conman with a sledgehammer instead of an actual bull.
So, stop telling me Trump accomplished something in North Korea until he actually … you know … accomplishes something. Don’t get me wrong: my fingers are as crossed as the next guy. I don’t want to wake up to a civil defense siren any more than you do. But, when it comes to complex, real-life problems, putting them in a blender never works. Exhibit A: Iraq.
(David Bell is a writer, attorney, former president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council and writes for CityWatch.)
-cw
