I think the WSJ has the best take on the freeing of the kidnapped journalist situation to this point:
We don’t begrudge the congratulations Bill Clinton deserves for saving the two journalists from what might have been a nightmare 12 years of hard labor; that was the sentence a kangaroo North Korean court imposed for allegedly blundering across its border with China in March. But the important question going forward is whether Mr. Clinton’s visit was merely the down payment Kim extracted from the Obama Administration for a potentially larger set of American concessions.
The point, of course, is this time the hostage negotiations forced by NoKo required, as the WSJ says, “the full prestige of a former US president” to bring the situation to a successful conclusion, i.e. the freeing of the two US journalists.
Instead of assuming we know what transired and condemning it, we need to wait and find out. However, given the level of envoy and the obvious propaganda value NoKo milked from the occasion, the WSJ’s question is valid.
What, if anything, was the cost of getting the two journalists out of there. I’m sure we’ll eventually find out and then can render some sort of judgment as to whether the outcome was beneficial or not to the US. That said, I’m happy to see Clinton got those two out of that hell hole. I just hope we didn’t give away the store to do it.
~McQ