Flamboyant former NBA star Dennis Rodman, right, scratches his face upon arrival at Pyongyang Airport, North Korea. Photo: Kim Kwang Hyon/The Associated Press
Kim is “an awesome guy” who wants President Obama to call him for a leader-on-leader chat, Rodman said when he returned to the United States.
Yeah, right.
On Monday, Rodman’s peculiar foreign-policy charade to Pyongyang looked all the more imbecilic when North Korea declared the 1953 armistice between it and South Korea nullified. Apparently rattled by U.S.-South Korean joint military training exercises, the North Korean government has intensified war rhetoric that’s typically shallow on specifics and laden with apocalyptic expressions. One example comes from a state-run news agency, which quoted a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson as saying the nation would “exercise the right to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to destroy the strongholds of the aggressors.”
Imagine how that’s affected the mood in South Korea or on the U.S. military bases home to more than 28,000 American soldiers in the region.
Rodman’s “awesome guy” is looking more and more like a spittin’ image of his father — a man beholden to a destructive ideology who prefers verbal threats rather than peace-creating negotiations.
As for Rodman, it’s safe to say that he shouldn’t pursue a second career in foreign policy.
