Pat Allen: The View from Right Field

Osama Bin Laden Killed, Not Captured. What Will the “Human Rights Left” Say?

Osama Bin Laden is dead, which is great news.  It appears, from at least some reports, that there was no attempt to capture him.  According to one report: "‘This was a kill operation,’ the official said, making clear there was no desire to try to capture bin Laden alive in Pakistan.”  I have no objection to this.  But I wonder what the “human rights left” will say.  It seems probable to me that, if “a kill operation” had happened in the George W. Bush administration, there would have been objections from at least some of those on the left.  A violation of rights and all.*  But given that it was President Obama, one of their own, who ordered it, what will they say?  My guess is, not much.  But we will see over the next few days.

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* Former President Jimmy Carter, for example, recently said it was a human rights violation for the United States to refuse to provide food aid to North Korea, apparently even though we have no idea, when we give food aid to them, whether it actually gets to the people who need it.

North Korea: Just A Currency Swap Or Something More?

I was going to write about the President’s speech on Afghanistan last night – until I came across the most amazing article in today’s Wall Street Journal. (I will try to get back to Afghanistan in a couple of days. It’s not going to go away {despite what some people may hope}.)

According to the article, the North Korean government is issuing new currency to replace its old currency. The new currency will have the last two zeros deleted; i.e., you exchange a 1,000 won bill for a 10 won bill. This would normally be no big deal; countries do it occasionally. Except that the North Korean government is limiting the amount of old currency that the people can convert. People will be allowed to convert about $40 worth of old currency. Any additional old currency will, effectively, become worthless.

The article says that the plan is "an apparent effort to make people more dependent on the government" by confiscating any independent wealth they might have and that it is "the most far-reaching of Pyongyang’s recent moves to crack down on market activities perceived to weaken its power.

One more thing: Instead of announcing the exchange through on television stations and in major newspapers, "authorities transmitted information [about the required currency swap] through a closed-circuit system that feed into speakers in homes and on streets, but that can’t be monitored outside North Korea." (Does this remind anyone else of, among other things, Patrick McGoohan’s original The Prisoner series?)

What does this tell us about North Korea? Does it tell us that the government has total control and can do what it wants? Or does it tell us that the government is worried that it is losing control and that it is getting desperate in its efforts to maintain control?

Does it tell us that we might as well deal with the current government because things are never going to change? Or is it telling us that, if we can figure out some way to support the people while opposing the government, the government may be so brittle it will crack.

Two concerns: First, some might worry that we could make things worse for the people of North Korea by imposing tough measures on the North Korean government. I cannot say that this could not happen. But it is hard to see how what we are doing now is helping them.

Second, don’t we need to try to negotiate limits on North Korean nuclear weapons? While I understand the point, have our policies thus far really slowed down the North Korean nuclear program? Or have the limits on what they have been able to accomplish been more the result of their own incompetence than anything we might have done?

I don’t know the answer to these questions, but one does wonder whether, somewhere in this news report, there is a small hope that, with the right combination of tough measures vis-à-vis the government of North Korea and support for the people of North Korea, this evil government might collapse.

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Update (12/4/09 8:23 a.m.):  I changed the title of this post.