Trump the peacenik
by digby
This is working out well:
President Donald Trump threatened Tuesday to "totally destroy" North Korea and its "Rocket Man" leader, warned the "murderous" Iranian government that it cannot endure, and declared that much of the world is "going to hell."
In his first speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Trump also urged nations to band together to fight "evil" — even as he extolled the virtue of respecting national sovereignty and insisted that America isn't looking to impose its "way of life" on others.
The at-times contradictory remarks were filled with soaring rhetoric that touched on everything from "God" to "chaos," and the dark tones were reminiscent of Trump's inaugural address, in which he promised to bring an end to "American carnage." The singling out of a handful of "rogue" nations also seemed to borrow from former President George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech.
"The scourge of our planet today is small regimes that violate every principle [on which] the United Nations is based," Trump said. "They respect neither their own citizens nor the sovereign rights of their countries. If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph."
The rest of the world now believes that scourge of our planet is us.
I wish I understood why people persist in seeing his rhetoric as isolationist. He sounds to me like a Bond villain announcing that he seeks world domination. Of course he always issues disclaimers that he doesn't. But it's obvious that he believes the US has the right to dictate how the world works and has no respect for multilateral institutional or international law or treaties.
It's not the "madman" theory. It's the "Goldfinger theory." And that's not exactly he same thing.
He's itching for war. You can feel it.
