Obama's Weakness Endangers Us All

North Korea has taken two American journalists prisoner and charged them with committing “hostile acts” against the regime.

Countries like North Korea, which are the pinnacle of tyranny in the modern world, commit atrocities all the time. What they don’t do is challenge America directly – unless they perceive weakness. The consequence of having a weak president in office is that countries like North Korea are more apt to challenge our resolve. There is no question that by his actions in the last few weeks, taping a message for Iran which legitimized the Islamic government, sending Secretary of State Clinton to Russia with a mislabeled ‘reset’ button, and sending Clinton to Mexico where she blamed the United States for Mexican drug violence, Barack Obama has emboldened all of America’s enemies and emboldened North Korea in this particular case.

It is obvious that the captured journalists are being used as political pawns by the Stalinist regime and it is obvious what Barack Obama will grant them for the journalists’ safe return. Recently two events regarding North Korean foreign policy have occurred. First, the six party talks to negotiate an end to North Korea’s nuclear program have broken down after years of stalling and delay tactics. Second, North Korea has a ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States, sitting on a launch pad. The North is claiming they are launching a satellite with the missile but the capabilities of the missile are obvious for the Korean’s long term goal, which is to carry a payload the size and weight of a nuclear warhead.

The game the Korean’s are about to play is painfully obvious. They are going to promise to commute the sentences of the American journalists, who will surely be convicted in a show trial, as a sign of goodwill – if America agrees to back off trying to stop the missile launch and stop sanctions against North Korea for pursuing their nuclear program.

The fact that American citizens must be aware of, and take responsibility for, is that if we had elected a strong president who was resolute in his foreign policy experience and decision making, the North Koreans would never have tried to pull this stunt.

There are good reasons for enemies of America to fear our president’s potential use of force. It is obvious that the Koreans have observed enough of Barack Obama’s conduct that they have concluded they have nothing to fear from him. Because of this, the Koreans will get their cake and eat it too and this is all made possible because our leaders don’t want to seem insensitive to the suffering of the journalists whose promised return will be conditioned on our inaction against North Korea.

It is fine and good on the surface to have a president in the White House that the citizens of the world love and think highly of. It is not good to have a world, emboldened by this love, take advantage of Barack Obama’s weakness.