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Welcome, Dear Leader!
Ike hosted Khrushchev. Let's bring Kim Jong Il for a visit.
By Peter Carlson

Kim Jong Il, the eccentric and unpredictable North Korean dictator, has been misbehaving lately -- firing his missiles, testing his nukes, jailing American journalists and scaring the hell out of everyone by suggesting that he will appoint his 26-year-old son, Kim Jong Un, to succeed him.

So what should President Obama do? Some people suggest diplomacy, others advocate overthrowing the regime, and yet others want to deploy Al Gore to Pyongyang. I've got a better idea: Obama should invite Kim to the United States and let him wander around for a couple of weeks, sipping cocktails with capitalists, visiting a home economics class in Iowa and mingling with Hollywood stars.
This is perhaps the dumbest idea I've read in WaPo. This year, at least. Kimmie lives in the best homes in North Korea. He has the best movie collection (no, Bambi won't dazzle him by giving him a box set of DVDs). He drinks the finest cognac. He gets whatever he wants. Letting him wander around Des Moines for a week isn't going to do a damned thing to change his views, and it's the usual combination of hubris and idiocy that only a liberal publication can concoct that brings us nonsense like this.
Fifty years ago, in similar circumstances, that's what President Dwight D. Eisenhower did. And it worked, sort of.
If you didn't mind waiting thirty years. How many people in the Soviet Union in that interval were imprisoned? How many dissidents ruined? How many ordinary people put upon? How many sent to 'corrective labor camps'?

And oh, remind me, Mr. Carlson, who decided that the old Soviet Union was an 'evil empire'? And who put the plan in motion to get rid of it rather than live in 'detente'? Remind me, because it sure didn't seem at that point that Mr. Khrushchev's visit had done a damned thing.

Posted by: Steve White 2009-06-15
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=271987