Now that the Obama administration has, without precondition, opened diplomatic relationships with the brutal Castro dictatorship in Cuba, wouldn't the next logical step be to do the same with the DPRK?
Within days of the warm hug extended to Raul and Fidel, UN Ambassador Samantha Power called North Korea a "living nightmare," that it holds 120,000 people prisoners. The Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights at the UN stated that North Korea is "a totalitarian system that is brutally enforced denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, information and association."
totalitarian system that is characterized by brutally enforced denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, information and association."
Hmmmmmm. Maybe I'm missing something. Can't much the same be said for Cuba? It still holds 57,000 political prisoners, and denies all of the same rights, yet the United States is ready to roll out the red carpet, welcome the Castro boys to the family of nations and extend trade credits.
Maybe I just don't understand the nuances of modern diplomacy. Is it just a matter of degree? Is it a Western hemisphere thing? An immigration policy thing? An Asian thing? A nuclear weapons thing?
It sure isn't a liberty thing. I see no discernible difference between these two regimes on that score.
If we follow the Obama logic for its unilateral movement on Cuba, then we should be opening up an embassy in Pyongyang and loosening up trade restrictions because surely our policy toward North Korea "wasn't working." This is the 3rd generation of North Korean dictators retaining their brutal grip on the north end of the Korean peninsula and nothing has changed, except North Korea now has nuclear weapons and it is still threatening, still proliferating, still brutalizing its own people.
I wish somebody would explain this all to me.
Hmmmmmm. Maybe I'm missing something. Can't much the same be said for Cuba? It still holds 57,000 political prisoners, and denies all of the same rights, yet the United States is ready to roll out the red carpet, welcome the Castro boys to the family of nations and extend trade credits.
Maybe I just don't understand the nuances of modern diplomacy. Is it just a matter of degree? Is it a Western hemisphere thing? An immigration policy thing? An Asian thing? A nuclear weapons thing?
It sure isn't a liberty thing. I see no discernible difference between these two regimes on that score.
If we follow the Obama logic for its unilateral movement on Cuba, then we should be opening up an embassy in Pyongyang and loosening up trade restrictions because surely our policy toward North Korea "wasn't working." This is the 3rd generation of North Korean dictators retaining their brutal grip on the north end of the Korean peninsula and nothing has changed, except North Korea now has nuclear weapons and it is still threatening, still proliferating, still brutalizing its own people.
I wish somebody would explain this all to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment