Why were three idiots worth rescue missions by a former U.S. president and a serving U.S. senator? They weren't kidnapped; they weren't hostages. All three knowingly broke the laws of the countries they were in, and, in the process, brought harm to innocents. The pair caught inside North Korea put at risk members of the human-rights network that was helping them with their story. (The two have still to give their version of events; Brent Marcus, spokesman for their employer, Current TV, says the network is respecting their request to have time to reunite with their families.) Yettaw's adventure led to a further 18 months of house arrest for the iconic opposition leader, 64-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi, who has already been confined for 14 of the past 20 years.
"I'm not particularly sympathetic," says Ambassador James Dobbins, a former senior State Department official and now director of RAND's international-security programs. "My immediate reaction is to wonder why people can't spend a few years in jail rather than counting on us to rescue them when they do things that are obviously stupid as well as illegal—things for which we would put them in jail in many cases. I can imagine the State Department grinds its teeth in frustration every time they find a new American who's done something stupid and now requires a former president of the United States go rescue them." Not many get such VIP treatment, of course. There are, according to the State Department, 2,652 Americans in jails around the world. (Many doing time for drug offenses.) Why were these three singled out for heavyweight intervention?
It's interesting that we do leave that many Americans behind and that very few seem to realize that the Logan Act still exists which makes it a felony to US citizen to conduct foreign relations without authority. Which when you consider since it was first passed in 1799, and it has never been enforced, makes one wonder why it hasn't just been repealed...
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