Our journalists imprisoned in North Korea

President Bush was widely ridiculed for employing the "axis of evil" phrase in reference to Iraq, Iran and North Korea in his 2002 State of the Union speech. I choose today not to debate the merits of the inclusion of the first two regimes, but would rather focus on the third.

I heard on Moody Radio's news update this morning that Laura Ling and Euna Lee have been sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for the following, according to the New York Times:

Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee were on a reporting assignment from Current TV, a San Francisco-based media company co-founded by Al Gore, the former vice president, when they were detained by the soldiers. The reporters were working on a report about North Korean refugees — women and children — who had fled their homeland in hopes of finding food in China.

(Read the whole NY Times report here.)

This infuriates me. Beyond words. We cannot continue on under the current state of affairs, letting a little potbellied tyrant mistreat our citizens (though I know that according to stereotype, as a cold-hearted, evil conservative, I am expected to be delighted that two liberal American journalists have had their pens silenced and cameras stilled.)

On behalf of the Obama administration, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has advised North Korea that as a result of this action, as well as its recent nuclear tests, they may very well be placed back on a watch list as a state sponsor of terrorism. In full disclosure, I was prepared to ask in a very indignant fashion why Obama had removed them from the list in the beginning? Then, I did a bit of research and found that that actually happened under the Bush administration...oh my. (The Huffington Post is good for something after all.) The rationale at the time was that it was a gesture of goodwill so that North Korea would continue with dismantlement of its nuclear weapons program. North Korea agreed to do that, but managed not to keep its promise. Surprise, surprise, surprise.

Joe Biden said more than he knew when he prophesied that this new President would be tested. We can hope that we are not recreating a Khrushchev/Kennedy scenario, but I must confess that I am not optimistic, given the rhetoric from this administration of the last 5 months, which obviously prefers empathy and dialogue over peace through strength.