Let My People Go!

Yay, Bill Clinton frees the captives! At President Obama's request, Bill Clinton made a high profile visit to North Korea on Tuesday to try and secure the release of two American journalist that had been held captive by the North Korean Government for the past 5 months. Laura Ling and Euna Lee were detained by soldiers on March 17 near the North Korean border with China.

In June, they were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in a North Korean prison camp for committing the "hostile" act of illegally entering a rogue nation before being pardoned. Ling and Lee were in the country illegally in the first place to film a documentary about North Korean women being trafficked into China for the sex trade for Al Gore's Current TV.

Months of preparation and negotiations went into Bill Clinton's "surprise" visit. After all, he is the highest-profile U.S. official to visit the region in almost ten years. Clinton and the White House have reported that Clinton's visit was purely a humanitarian effort, despite some claims made by media that Clinton carried a message from President Obama. There has been speculation that Clinton also spoke about the country's nuclear program with Kim Jong-il. State-run media described Clinton's landmark trip to Pyongyang as resulting in rare talks with reclusive Kim Jong Il that were "wide-ranging" and "exhaustive."

I don't believe that North Korea's nuclear program was a major topic of talk, if at all. Clinton was there to free the journalists and that was his main objective. The situation was already delicate and Bill Clinton's wife, Secretary of Sate Hillary Clinton, had worked hard to separate the case of the journalists from the world wide condemnation of Korea's nuclear ambitions. I believe had he brought up the nukes issues on this trip, then the journalist would not be home now.

The US Administration had recently changed its rhetoric in discussing the case and said it was seeking amnesty rather than an acknowledgment from the North Korean Government that the women had been wrongly arrested. The North Koreans said Mr Clinton, who was acting in an "unofficial capacity," offered an apology on behalf of the women. However, US officials said he made no apology for the conduct of the journalists. The White House made it clear that Mr Clinton’s journey was ‘‘not in any way’’ linked to the nuclear issue

I am hopeful that this success story can lead to the United States and the Korean Government having a better relationship. I hope that trust of eachother and a better understanding of eachother's point of view will be developed on both sides. The trip also brings light to former President Bill Clinton's history as an exemplary diplomat. I think a lot of people lost sight of that when they started focusing on other irrelevant stuff like his affair.

The truth is, Bill is a hell of a unifier and humanitarian. Clinton won an award from NFID for his work to promoting AIDS treatment and prevention in the developing world. If Obama's as smart as I think he is, then this trip was just the first of several diplomatic trips Clinton will make on behalf of the U.S. The right thing to do would be to make Bill a U.S. diplomat. If anyone is capable of helping to greatly improve the U.S. 's tarnished image (we have the Bush Administration to thank for that), it's Bill Clinton. He would serve as an extremely valuable asset to the Obama Administration.