N Korea Pardons Journalists

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Kim Jong Il pardoned the two American journalists who were sentenced to hard labor after his meeting with Bill Clinton in an unannounced meeting today.

Way to go Bill! You da man!

 

Probably because Bill laughed at all of their Hilary jokes. I'd bet he even told a few...

 

It's good to see another former President stepping into the role Carter had for years. The ability of a former president to negotiate with powers the US will not formally have dealings with is truly astounding.

Carter had a mediocre presidency and a great post-presidency. I really came to respect him over the past decade or so. Perhaps I will gain an appreciation for Clinton as well.

 

Kim Il-Jong is a nutbar, but he's not a stupid nutbar. I wonder what he got in return. I can guarantee that he didn't do this out of the goodness of his heart.

He could have kept Bill -- I would have had no problem with that!

 

LKD -- most likely the assurances that Kim's message will be taken directly to Obama.

 

We still need to liberate the North Koreans, the situation there is not even humane. I heard that this book was a good introduction into a modern holocaust.

 

If they were crying for liberation, then perhaps we should consider it, but it is very difficult to liberate someone who does not wish to be liberated . . .

And what message could he possibly want sent to Obama? "Back off or we'll kill the next ones"? "Please give us more humanitarian aid"?

 

1. The North Korean government made it quite clear that the punishment for just about anything, is death. As this guy, who escaped from NK, is claiming.
2. Would you not help a victim of prolonged mental abuse, even if they were not crying for help?

Edit:
Just for the heck of it, try watching this video.


Nice things that come by are:
- It is illegal to leave your town, without a government permit.
- It is illegal to sell your own goods, without a government permit.
- All radios sold are manufactured in such a way that they only accept government frequencies. If you tweak the radio to receive radio broadcasts from other countries, you get send to prison.
- Becoming a Christian is a capital crime, punishable by death.

There was an anecdote I heard from someone who read the book I previously linked to. She was in a concentration camp, imprisoned for false charges. She witnessed a baby being born in that prison, very rare because normally pregnancies are forcefully terminated. The baby was born, a prisonguard walked by and crushed the baby with its foot..... yeah, I'll let that sink in for a moment. She appeared before the U.S. congress, talking about the situation in NK. Nothing happened so far.

 

Quick, someone get him tickets to Iran. We have another three idiots who need a pardon. Seriously, who in their right mind goes to Iraq to hike on the border between Iraq and Iran. Where were they going to go next year, the border between the 7th and 8th plane of hell?

 

They were gamers looking for Orcist...

 

From what I've heard the realease was something that had been agreed upon in advance, while the bigger concern was the negotiations about the nuclear programme. It's good to see Bill Clinton to take a role on the global stage after his presidency. All former presidents are powerful assets that bring more credibility to negotiations and will probably make the opposite part more willing to negotiate.

 

I am not saying that things are rosy there -- I know full well that the situation there is piss poor. But if we were to try to "liberate" them, they'd fight us tooth and claw, and a lot of our people would die -- hey, it DID happen in the Korean "conflict". Plus, after all those people died, they still didn't end up "liberated". So what's the point? Lots of other methods we can use to help them, and save invasions and liberations when they threaten our allies.

I'd love to live in a world where brutal force solved everything all the time*, but sadly it doesn't.

*If we did, I'd advocate just sending troops into the most horrid places in Africa and just shoot anyone who acts like an eh-hole. It wouldn't stop the genocides, rapes or slavery, though.

 

I don't think they would fight us back, at all. You take out the command and the rest will be wondering who to take orders from. No one there, in that entire country, who isn't a high ranking officer, ever thought for himself. Because that is not allowed. And *it* didn't happen in the Korean war, what happened in the Korean war were the Chinese.

I didn't talk about brutal force. No one was talking about brutal force. There are other ways to take over countries without brutal force. You don't have to shock and awe them by throwing bombs at them for weeks. How about making the population think? You drop fliers, take over the official TV stations, radio stations, just anything to force doubt into those minds. Seriously, NK isn't Iraq, NK isn't Afghanistan and NK isn't Vietnam.

That's a horrible position to take! If you saw a child getting beaten/raped/etc on the street, would you pass by and say that even if you did something to save the child, there would be another child getting beaten/raped somewhere else and that it would thus be pointless? Of course not!

 

Let me put it another way: US efforts to bring "Freedom" to Afghanistan and Iraq have been less than successful. The populace has to want your help. The Korean conflict and the Vietnames one showed that if the population doesn't want your help, your efforts will be fruitless. Everyone thought that the Iraqis would welcome the US with open arms once Saddam's totalitarian government was removed. That didn't happen.

One doesn't undertake a course of action, especially one that puts soldiers' lives at risk, unless there is a reasonable chance of success. If the West sent soldiers into every single bad place in the world, they'd be spread really bloody thin, and nothing would be accomplished, and no one would be helped -- at least, not enough people to justify the troops who would be killed.


As for the NK situation, I don't see it as being that different from the other places you mentioned. I don't think that they are a propoganda campaign away from embracing western style capitalism here.

 

I know this is completely off-topic but... please tell me you're joking and just made up this story. Because if you didn't... well...

 

Saving peoples from themselves?

Good the journalists got free. Cheers for Mr. Clinton. I feel tempted to say that in a country where justice is priceless, pardons are cheap.

Eerily, the reports from North Korea, in style and content, remind me of the iirc 'letters from behind the iron curtain' that I read when I was a child (I was an ardent cold warrior with 14). And I remember how we used to send aid packages to relatives in East Germany and a diaspora parish. The packages had to adhere to very strict rules to reach their destination, in particular that no propaganda or merchandising was to be included. All were, of course, being searched prior to being delivered. I also remember the tales of relatives crossing the border and visiting our relatives, and of fellow Catholics from there visiting us and staying at our home. I still chide myself that I never visited (East) Berlin when it was still divided.

As for liberation, it was IMO infinitely easier to liberate, say, France from the Nazis (i.e. an occupying power) than Germany or East Germany from itself - or while at it, to liberate Iran from Iran, Iraq from Iraq, North Korea from North Korea or Afghanistan from Afghanistan.

In the case of East Germany the problem of oppression was solved by the reunification. It needs to be kept in mind that the East Germans had their own doubts and problems with their regime and hardly needed Western education about what they were experiencing everyday first hand. The majority of prominent East German dissidents I would place on the political left, criticising that the socialism of the Honecker regime wasn't true socialism*. They weren't pro western, just intellectually honest. Without them going on the streets the Honecker regime would not have fallen. On the other hand, without Western influence and Russian self restraint or hesitation, the revolution in East Germany would not have been possible. And considering that authoritarian governments greatly emphasise self-preservation, it is a little marvel in itself that the East German government didn't crack down on the protests. Keeping in mind the number of people snitching, sometimes on their spouses, for the Stasi, the regime probably wouldn't have been short of domestic volunteers for a crackdown. Funny enough, my father, who only visited there twice and briefly, had a Stasi file, in which was noted that he was Catholic, a tax official - and a bourgeois element and some other things that weren't in his passport. The East German regime was thorough and repressive enough, but easily out-repressed for the North Koreans.

I think the brutality of the North Koreans is a cultural thing. Considering that the good South Koreans found it adequate to massacre their own civilians here and there, lest they turn red, that suggests the brutality is part of the cultural heritage. I think, and may well be utterly wrong, that the Asian cultural heritage of collectivism lends itself to the repression of counter currents. North Korea now is out of the cold war paradigm, and as in Germany, the suggested solution here is reunification as well. The Chinese probably would very much like to see a less troublesome neighbour - BUT: What then? Korean re-unification and the creation of a nuclear armed Korean regional power? Japan, with it's traditional contempt for Koreans, certainly won't be happy about it. China wouldn't be too happy about it either.

The point about a brutal cultural heritage can IMO be said about Iraq in which brutality has been intrinsic ever since the state was formed, and where it came through in every violent change of power - from the bloody overthrow of the monarchy that didn't even spare royal pets to the effective lynching of Saddam.

As for Afghanistan, I read an apt characterisation recently that put it quite well:

I think he is perfectly right. Speaking of Braveheart, Scotland was only pacified after 2 centuries of brutal colonisation and pretty complete eradication of everything Scottish. The British were very thorough. I read that most of what now passes as Scottish folklore, tartans in particular, had to be reinvented in the 19th century.

* Which suggests to me that many Iranian dissidents may not in fact be pro western, but simply critical that the Islamic Republic of Iran is not truly Islamic. I also remember one guy, who I met at a protest in Cologne, who agonised for about ten minutes about the lack of democracy and freedom in Iran before he told me that he wanted to reinstate the Shah, that is, restore the monarchy. Obviously, being against authoritarians doesn't mean you're pro Freedom™.

 

Link

Oops, I didn't get to BTA's post.

 

Congratulations to Mr. Clinton, and the freed journalists. I only wonder - who sends former US presidents abroad? Is this something the current occupant of the Oval Office asks them to do, or is there another channel these things go through? I am pretty sure someone like Bill Clinton doesn't just decide to, hey, let's pop up at random world hellhole #25 and see what we can do there.

Edit: coincidentally, the visit was a valuable chance for the US to have some talks with the NK leadership and thus have a better idea of what is going on there. I am sure Obama would be very interested in knowing exactly what Clinton and Kim talked about... maybe it is a good idea to send someone to negotiate the release of the hikers in Iran, especially if they were only simple hikers.

 

Even though the trip wasn't publicized, it was almost certain that the Obama administration knew he was going, and maybe even were indirectly involved with the negotiations. You don't send a former president over to a foreign country unless you are reasonably sure the deal is going to get done.

However, former presidents have frequently taken quasi-embassador trips to foreign countries. It's only been in the 8 years that Bush was president that this didn't happen. In fact, in 1994 when Clinton was president, Carter went to North Korea (although at the time it was Kim Jong Il's father who was in charge).

The reason this is done is twofold: The first reason is obvious in that a former president is a very prestigious figure. However, as a former president is NOT a member of the current administration, it is not an official visit. This is useful in keeping to the US policy of not negotiating with hostile and/or terrorist regimes. Since Bill Clinton is now just a very prestigious civilian, it's not an administration official that's making the trip. That's why Bill, and not our current Secretary of State Hillary, made the trip, because she's part of the administration.

@TGS - I agree with your assessment about the hikers along the Iran-Iraq border. WTF were they thinking?