Despite what some political pundits have said, don’t make light of President Bill Clinton’s efforts to rescue two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, held captive in North Korea yesterday. Not long ago these two journalists were accused of crossing into North Korea illegally and committing “hostile acts,” and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor. Instead, Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee arrived home this morning some 20 hours after President Clinton’s plane landed in North Korea. In short, his efforts may very well have saved their lives.
David Gregory, host of “Meet the Press” on NBC, said today on “Morning Joe” that President Clinton’s trip “made sense for several reasons.”
Certainly, there are questions about what this means for the future of American diplomacy. George Stephanopoulos, host of “This Week” on ABC News, wrote this morning,
The smile on Kim Jong-Il’s face said it all.He squeezed every ounce of benefit from the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee. A coup for Clinton too. For the White House? More of a dilemma. They had to send Clinton once the North Koreans asked for him.
Yesterday, writing for the WashingtonPost.com, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, observed,
While the United States is properly concerned whenever its citizens are abused or held hostage, efforts to protect them should not create potentially greater risks for other Americans in the future. Yet that is exactly the consequence of visits by former presidents or other dignitaries as a form of political ransom to obtain their release. Iran and other autocracies are presumably closely watching the scenario in North Korea. With three American hikers freshly in Tehran’s captivity, will Clinton be packing his bags again for another act of obeisance? And, looking ahead, what American hostages will not be sufficiently important to merit the presidential treatment?
But is that accurate? After all, as Maureen Dowd of The New York Times notes, isn’t North Korea substantially more harmful on the world stage? In July, North Korean test-fired 4 short-range missiles. She writes,
But the former Bush bullies have no credibility on diplomacy. They spent eight years wrecking it, and the score for them on North Korea is 0-6; zero meetings with Kim and enough plutonium for six nuclear bombs.
Bill Clinton will bring back valuable information about Kim’s mental and physical health. If we’d had that sort of information about the snubbed Saddam, we would have known that he was in his own spiral of doom, trying to bluff his neighbors, with no need for our shock and awe.
Kim Jong Il is reported to be suffering from many life threatening ailments including kidney failure and pancreatic cancer, and he was rumored to have had a stroke last year.