Investor's Business Daily posted an editorial today about the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the journalists who were nabbed by Kim Jong Il's security forces while on a reporting mission on the China border. While it is fantastic that they are safely home, many journalists are worrying what price was paid and will be paid for their release.
The article points out:
"Groveling, anyone? Kim now knows the current U.S. leader can be blackmailed -- if he didn't know it before. That's what made President Clinton so appropriate for this mission. It was from Clinton that Kim first learned this lesson.
In 1994, recall, Clinton sent former President Carter -- see a pattern? -- to North Korea to negotiate that country's denuclearization. Carter returned with a deal similar in its sycophancy and cynicism to the one Neville Chamberlain brought back from Munich.
In exchange for billions of dollars in food aid and even help for its "peaceful" nuclear power effort, North Korea vowed to behave and decommission its nuclear weapons program.
No sooner had the
ink dried than North Korea began cheating. During the Clinton years, the U.S. and the U.N. signed three agreements with North Korea. North Korea broke its word each time."
Notice that just this week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's security forces arrested three young American journalists for an alleged border violation of Iran. Iran and North Korea have both learned that they can take American hostages and use them as leverage in any agreements between their countries and America. This does not say good things for the future of American citizens traveling abroad.
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