I was so proud that President Bill Clinton did this..

 steeler wrote: 
Bonus feature is that we (the US) actually got a first hand look at Kim and should have come home with some greater insight as to how shots are being called in NK.  That makes it a win / win.

 manbirdexperiment wrote: 
... and dim sum.

 dionysius wrote: 
plus hey, free lunch for him.

 steeler wrote: 

Amen. I'm not a big fan of Clinton, but what he did here was sheer brilliance.

Sending Bill Clinton to North Korea to bring back the 2 journalist hostages was a stroke of brilliance.

You can see from the photos of Bill and Kim Jong seated next to each other that Jong saw this as some kind of coup for him. A meeting with a former U.S. President. However, Bill was in and out of there so quickly that I seriously doubt anyone else in the world saw it as anything more than it was — I'll go there to get these 2 women out of there.  If photos of me sitting stone-faced next to Jong is the price, well, that's cheap.  

Why buy into the game North Korea has been playing for years — that if you in any manner recognize us, you are in some manner condoning our practices.  That's an outmoded way of thinking, one that never really made much sense to me. 

Let Jong try to put a propaganda spin on this.  No one is buying. Meeting with someone is not a concession of anything.

We got 2 hostages released with nothing more than a long jet flight for Bill to and from North Korea.      

 hobiejoe wrote: 
Aye, it's crap like this that makes me real nervous...Never know how the major loon will respond...

Bit of brinksmanship going on in the Far East at the moment.....
 
 

• Ewen MacAskill in Washington
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 June 2009 18.28 BST
• Article history

Tension was growing in the Pacific today as the US navy prepared to intercept a North Korean cargo ship suspected of carrying weapons in defiance of a United Nations ban.

The US navy has been tracking the Kang Nam since its left a North Korean port on Wednesday.

It would be the first ship to be intercepted since the UN last week imposed sanctions on North Korea as punishment for conducting an underground nuclear test last month. The sanctions ban the import and export of nuclear material, missiles and all other weapons other than small arms.

A USS destroyer, the John McCain (named after the father of the Republican senator, who was an admiral), was awaiting orders to intercept the ship off the Chinese coast.

More...

 winter wrote: 
Friends are one thing, alliances between nation states are something else entirely.  Good relations are a good thing, permanent alliances are not.  Besides, if we mind our own business the chances of going to war - or making alliances - are much reduced.

 oldslabsides wrote: 
Well, with all due respect to the Father of Our Country, I disagree. It's a bit late to go looking for friends when you need help moving, IMO. ("Dude! I just met you and you seem totally cool! Want to help me haul my furniture up and down stairs next Saturday?")

And if you're only a friend when you need something, are you a true friend or just a user? 

 winter wrote: 
I don't have a fly by link but that is not what was mentioned. Pretty sure.

 winter wrote: 
On this we shall agree to disagree.

I don't want a wall, just an unwillingness to interfere in the affairs of others.  George Washington argued in his farewell address that alliances are dangerous things, sometimes necessary in war but never in peace.  I don't see that that fundamental bit of wisdom has any less validity today.

 oldslabsides wrote: 

Big picture? We're all interconnected, like it or lump it. The oceans are a lot narrower than they were, and the cost of living behind a wall far outweighs the benefits, IMO.

 kurtster wrote: 
I don't think they've got any reason to attack us first. Their bombs aren't even as big as the first ones we built back in WWII. Yes, they're still dangerous - but consider that the inevitable counterattack (even with conventional weapons) would be far worse than anything they could dish out, and there's just no profit to be gained from striking first. 

I think the North Koreans and the Iranians both learned from Iraq: if you're going to bluster around at odds with the US, you'd better have actual WMDs instead of fake ones to back up all that hot air. Also it's a useful blackmail tool for the North Koreans - even if they can't hit us, they can hit Japan or South Korea pretty easily. 

Options? Keep talking, first and foremost. Work with the Chinese to pressure the North Koreans. If China stops supporting Kim Jong-Il, his regime's days are numbered - and he knows it. His obsession with isolationism and an excessively strong military has bankrupted his country. It's only a matter of time before it all falls apart. 

 winter wrote: 
I can live with the shame of the mistakes of past leadership.  Minding one's own business hardly seems shortsighted to me.

I think the "suitcase" bomb threat has been overstated in an attempt at fear mongering.  If it were really that easy, someone would have done it by now.

 oldslabsides wrote: 
Well, they're working on resolving that. And since all you really have to do anymore is sell a bomb to some fanatical proxies and let them figure out how to deliver it, that whole "out of range"  scenario is fast becoming meaningless.

Besides, we committed to helping the South Koreans and Japanese protect themselves. It'd be shameful (and shortsighted) to renounce those agreements now that the going's gotten tougher. 

I know I'll get called an isolationist - at the least - but since North Korea has no weapons which are a threat to the US, the US doesn't have a dog in this fight.  Our military presence in South Korea (and a lot of other places) should be ended.  We are not the world's cop, dammit.

A lot of our current foreign policy problems can be traced to us sticking our nose where it doesn't belong; we should stop doing that.

 winter wrote: 

That's right we don't. The last ones were dismantled by Bush in 2003.  I don't have a solution for NK, other than a non existant weapon.

My point is through the process of talking to no end, the horse is out of the barn.  Closing the barn doors after the horse has escaped is meaningless.  All we can do is wait, we already have lost control of the situation. 

I am not advocating the genocide of the NK's, we don't have the right.  But if NK builds a missile and makes a successful nuclear attack on US territory, we have no one to blame but ourselves.  And we are effectively powerless to stop them.  Same with Iran.  Only proxies can act on our behalf, and I don't know of any willing to do so.

The burden clearly falls on the Chinese to solve the NK problem.  They created the monster, now they must slay the monster.  We should pull out of the region militarily and let the locals solve it themselves.  Perhaps my frustration is showing, but do we have any vital interests to protect in the region anymore ?  Guess I am in over my head here.

 jadewahoo wrote: 
There are other ways - better ways - than inflicting that kind of horror on the North Koreans. And while someone builds nuclear weapons and missiles to threaten us and our allies, they look like the bad guys. We irradiate their cities and we're going to look like the bad guys for a very long time to come. Talk about a great way to make new enemies all over the world!

 kurtster wrote: 
A) We don't have any neutron bombs. Several nations can make them, but none are presently known to deploy any.

B) Odds are the leadership of North Korea have their own bunkers to hide in. Odds are the people of North Korea - already starving and suffering - don't. I don't know about you, but I don't consider "well, you should've picked a better country to be born in" much of a guilt assessment.

C) Seriously? You're okay with adopting the same rationale as al Qaeda? "It is unfortunate that the citizens of a nation should suffer as a direct result of its leadership. But we have as a nation and have been attacked for that reason only." So if it's only "unfortunate" that the innoncent should suffer for the wicked, where do we get off being outraged at a few thousand "unfortunate losses" on 9/11? Isn't that just the cost of doing business on the international scale? Would you perhaps like to explain to the parents of the kids who died in the Oklahoma City bombing that their chidlren's deaths were "unfortunate", but McVeigh needed to make a point about our increasingly tyrannical government and the poor little buggers just happened to be between the bomb and the Feds? It's immoral to kill innocent US citizens because their leadership is doing stuff you disagree with, but it's fine to inflcit far heavier casualties elsewhere for the same reason? I guess the Athenians were right: "the strong do as they will, the weak suffer as they must".

If negotiation and diplomacy fail - a distinct possibility here - we have all kinds of trained commandos and precision-guided weapons. Maybe it's very difficult to find exactly the right snake's head to hack, but that doesn't mean we should set fire to the forest and hope for the best.