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Who's not compassionate? Of course we all feel sadly for Warmbier, his family, and friends. One can be compassionate while also respecting the reality of the situation and the consequences... Their country. Their laws. Their courts.
I would then say the same about Syria. Forget that red line nonsense the right complains about.
They are already working on his release but I find it strange they did nothing to help that Marine that made a wrong turn and ended up in a Mexican prison a year or so ago.
Do you not know?
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After 214 days in a Mexican prison, Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi returned home to Florida Saturday, having been freed Friday night after a strong diplomatic push appeared to help convince a judge to release the former Marine on humanitarian grounds
Blaming the young man for being sentenced to 15 years of hard labor is similar to when someone blames the wife for making her husband want to beat her.
I'm noticing an interesting theme in this thread... Seems those who could mostly be considered right-leaning are advocating respecting the differences in other countries, i.e., obeying their laws, understanding that being a US citizen doesn't negate the foreign country's sovereignty, not expecting the whole world to be an extension of the US, etc... While those who could mostly be considered left-leaning, as usual, want to impose their beliefs on everyone and everything regardless of the fact that they have no right to do so.
I'm probably the most 'leftist' person on this board, and I don't agree with the idea of the US intervening.
I guess you favor totalitarianism over human rights. Got it!
In a foreign sovereign country, that's not my choice to make. As a US citizen, I will not tolerate it in the US.
Haven't you liberals had enough of the US fighting in foreign wars? Haven't you had enough of footing the bill for and having our own troops killed while being the world's police? Well... if you continue to insist that foreign sovereignties don't have the right to establish their own government, laws, and courts, get ready to pay for many more wars.
After reading through all 22 pages of this thread, I feel like some people are asking the wrong questions...
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How do we know he did it? It's a grainy video, maybe NK made it up.
Maybe, maybe not. It doesn't matter. Someone capable of being admitted to college would know he was entering a country known for corruption and brutality. He was playing Russian roulette with a semi-auto. Whether North Korea staged any of it is irrelevant, since Warmbier wasn't forced by the NK government to book the trip in the first place.
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Was his punishment just?
You'll have to go down the rabbit hole of writing some universal set of morals and proper punishments. The "cutting off hands for stealing" is a good example. Allowing marriage to a 13 year old is another. I'm not arrogant enough to suggest that my interpretation morality is universal.
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15 years seems excessively harsh.
It's essentially a death sentence, death is all but guaranteed in a NK labor camp. That's the funny thing about life, sometimes stupid decisions have very heavy handed consequences.
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It's still too harsh, he only made one mistake.
Yes, with catastrophic results. He might as well have been going cave to cave at a Taliban stronghold, waving the American flag and handing out sketches of Mohammed.
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The NK government clearly forced him to read a pre-written confession.
That seems likely. They control the message there, they're just not as good at it as the US is. That propaganda video of Americans eating birds and drinking hot snow is ridiculous, but have you turned on "the news" in the last 10 or 15 years? We're not much better.
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What if it was your kid? You'd feel different.
No I wouldn't. It'd be an epic failure as a parent if I raised my kids to think it was a good idea to travel to North Korea, Afghanistan, etc. And by all means, if I make the news for something equally as stupid, feel free to make fun of me as much as you want.
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