Otto Warmbier, the University of Virginia student who was detained in North Korea for nearly a year and a half, died Monday afternoon, days after he returned home in a coma, his parents announced. Warmbier, 22, had been medically evacuated last week and was being treated at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. His parents, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, did not specify the cause of death. But they made clear in a written statement that they blamed North Korea for what happened. Their son was arrested in January 2016 at the end of a brief tourist visit to the isolated country. “Unfortunately, the awful torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today,” the Warmbiers said.
Fred Fleitz of the Center for Security Policy blasted the Obama administration for dropping the ball on Otto Warmbier, resulting in his murder by the North Korean government. “A young man who was his hotel roommate before he was arrested – he’s a British citizen – says the Obama administration never contacted him to find out the particulars of why he was arrested. The Obama administration said to the Warmbier family, ‘Stay silent. Do nothing,’ and the Obama administration pursued their idiotic policy of strategic patience, which we now know was an utter failure.”
Stay silent. Do nothing. That has been the policy of the United States toward any and every dictator. It’s the most cowardly, idiotic and ineffective strategy one could imagine. Why do you think Islamic jihad is winning? And why can we be certain that if and when North Korea gets the capability to send missiles to Japan or the Western United States, it will do so in a heartbeat? Because we continue to “stay silent”. And do nothing. That has been our foreign policy for at least the last decade or so. It’s up to Donald Trump’s administration to decisively reverse that. If it doesn’t, then the United States, as a nation, will end up like Otto Warmbier.
If you doubt this, then just look at Great Britain and France. Not only do they stay silent and do nothing. Their governments tell their people, “It’s all your fault”. Obama told Americans the same thing when he lectured us for our “racism” following terrorist attacks, as if condemning a religious ideology based on violence constitutes racism.
Staying silent and doing nothing is more than the policy of losers. It’s the policy of those who do not want to win. If for some perverse reason we actually wanted to lose our liberty and freedom to the likes of insane dictatorships or wildly irrational religious fanaticism nobody will openly criticize, we would just do nothing. The unspoken premise? “Don’t acknowledge that it’s true, and it won’t be true.” It’s truly madness, and it has to stop.
PC kills. Pacifism kills. Because when you surrender your willingness and your right to defend yourself, brutal tyrants will terrorize and ultimately kill you. It applies to nations no less than to individuals. We’re all next, unless we start to treat these tyrants with the brutality they deserve.
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