The longer and more I ponder former President Clinton's "rescue" of two female journalists held hostage (once you decide North Korea has an illegitimate government, they are little more than terrorists holding hostages) by Kim Jong Il's regime, the less I like it -- and the more I'm sure we gave up a bit of United States sovereignty in order to achieve it.
These two Al Gore employees are hardly the only American political prisoners in the world. Will Clinton now go to Waziristan to parley with the Taliban over their 'POW'? How about Tehran and the three tourists who stupidly traipsed across the oft-unmarked border between Iraq and Iran?
No, Clinton won't go to those places, because he'd be an obvious representative of the U.S. government there. In Korea, he could play-act sole allegiance to his former VP Gore. And, yet, does anyone doubt that the NORKs leeched a humiliating 'payment' from the U.S. government in exchange for releasing the journalists? After all, the whole episode's purpose for Kim was to humiliate his 'oppressor' in non-proliferation matters. Be sure he thinks he did! It will be interesting to note how long it takes for the details to surface, and how damaging they are to U.S. policy once they're known. (I'd bet AFTER the 2012 presidential elections, if possible.)
Anyway, I can't help but wish the Korean prisoners had been rescued in a Perot-type operation such as the Texas billionaire propogated for his employees in Iran in 1979:
Ironically, I have little use for H. Ross Perot. As much as I might admire his business acumen, I hold him almost entirely responsible for the Clintons' rise to national prominence with his third-party candidacies, especially in 1992. But, credit where it was due: Perot himself was present inside the Iranian prison when his company's employees, led by former Green Beret "Bull" Simon, flawlessly invaded Iran and rescued their fellow workers about the same time the Carter Administration was scratching an ill-advised mission in the Iranian desert, with eight servicemen's lives lost.
History is full of ironies -- it might have been Perot-birthed Clinton who signalled the end of America's heroic era by performing so publicly what Perot accomplished in private.
We seem to be giving over private to public on a routine basis these days, don't we?
