If you want a clue to the basic reason behind Trump’s capitulating “Memorandum of Understanding,” just read his attempted justification for allowing the Iranians to keep their ballistic missiles:

“I mean, they have to have some, because other people have some. . . . I’m saying that if other countries have them, it’s a little bit unfair for them not to have some.”

True, the reference to “other countries” was to other despotisms in that region. But the whole point of this nominal war was to eliminate a significant threat to America. And Iran is the nation posing that danger. It is Iran that is dominated by an ideology that regards America as the “Great Satan” which needs to be annihilated. It is Iran that is spearheading jihadism across the globe. It is Iran, therefore, that needs to be defeated and disarmed. Yet Trump is concerned about being “unfair” to Iran by removing its arsenal of ballistic missiles.

An effective foreign policy must make moral discriminations. It must identify the nature of a country that is an enemy, and the nature of a country that is a friend. Merely looking at a country’s weaponry cannot guide us. Nuclear bombs in the hands of Iran or North Korea are very different from nuclear bombs in the hands of England or France. Just as the guns possessed by criminals call for a very different evaluation than do guns possessed by the police.

But Trump is incapable of making such moral evaluations. Whatever the conflict—Ukraine vs. Russia, Israel vs. the Palestinians—he cannot understand which side deserves our support and which our condemnation. And even when it comes to Iran, he does not comprehend the fundamental moral distinction between that nation and ours.

Instead, he sees only two haggling parties that need to come to some agreement. What he sees is an opportunity to impress the world with his deal-making skills.

This amoral approach to Iran has, predictably, led to disaster. Trump engaged in a war that will not result in the categorical defeat of an enemy and the irreversible removal of its ability to threaten us. He does not grasp the reason Iran is a threat. Instead he declares that he has achieved a change of regime in Iran, because “we’re dealing with different people than anybody’s dealt with before.” The fact that they hold the same ideas—the same theocratic, America-hating ideas—means nothing to him. Because ideas, particularly ideas of morality, mean nothing to him.

“[The] development [of law] during the last hundred years has become increasingly one of the destruction of justice by 'social justice', until even some students of jurisprudence have lost sight of the original meaning of 'justice'. In substance this has meant that the individual ... has become increasingly subject to the commands of authority....
    "This totalitarian trend appear[s] under a moral guise. It is indeed the concept of ‘social justice’ which has been the Trojan Horse through which totalitarianism has entered.”

~ FA Hayek from his 1976 book Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 2: The Mirage of Social Justice [pp 135-6]

We will know that the reparations debate is morally serious when this question is a part of the mix: How much does Ghana owe the USA? Why? “The Ashanti Empire (1701–1901) in modern-day Ghana was a prominent participant in the slave trade. Enslavement was primarily fueled by warfare, where the empire acquired captives from rival […]