Reply to UVA Student Released from North Korea; Has Been in a Coma for a Year?

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Reply to "UVA Student Released from North Korea; Has Been in a Coma for a Year?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm a lefty liberal and I have the utmost compassion and sorrow for the young man and his family.  I don't blame them for anything they say, because they are obviously grief stricken and anyone in their circumstance would be.  Did he do something idiotic?  Yes.  Did many of us do idiotic things as 20 year olds?  Yes.  It's always tragic when a young person dies or is tragically injured when they do something really dumb (get in a car with a drunk driver, pass out in the middle of a road, jump off a cliff into the water and hit their head on a rock, etc., etc.).  Young people think they are bullet proof, and they are not.  Its why parents go around with their heart in their mouth.

Do I blame the Obama administration?  No.  Could they have done more?  Maybe, I don't know.  North Korea is bat-shit crazy in a way that is very difficult to deal with and very unpredictable.  I'm not really in a position of second-guessing how professionals deal with an insane man with nuclear weapons.  But I don't blame Otto's parents for second-guessing the politicians.

A new administration often has some leeway to negotiate where the other country is looking for an "out" (think the Iranian hostage crisis, also resolved during an administration change).  [/quote]

+1 to everything. Obviously I don't hold Otto's parents' statements against them. From an objective viewpoint, I don't think the Obama administration should have picked a possibly nuclear fight with NK over this, but these are his parents. They'd move heaven and earth for their kid, and of course they'd be mad at the government for not doing the same. Yes, he shouldn't have been in NK in the first place, but that's irrelevant to this discussion. The consequences are totally disproportionate, and I feel awful for him and his family. I'm no Trump supporter, but I'm glad he got Otto home. Although I agree that this is probably more related to NK not wanting an American to die in their custody (self-interest) than Trump's "negotiating skills."[/quote]

+2 Thank you for the sane and reasonable post.[/quote]

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