Cutting the tripwire.

• Author: Terbush, Allan
• Position: Letters

I think that Doug Bandow ("Cutting the Tripwire," July) makes many important points about the North Korean crisis. Surely we should have left Korean issues to South Korea and the rest of the Asian community a long time ago, but I am disappointed that Mr. Bandow did not address two important points:

First, while we should be out of South Korea, is this really a great time to be leaving? Leaving now could be an even greater mistake than Reagan's pullout from Lebanon. If we exit now it looks like we're running away because of nuclear blackmail--a position of weakness that will only encourage more rogue behavior by such unseemly states as North Korea.

Second, what about the dangers posed by the exportation of North Korea's nuclear weapons? You can argue all day about whether our past mistakes created this crisis in the first place. The fact is that North Korea has nukes, and it has shown that it is all too happy to export any military technology to get its hands on hard cash.

There is much that needs to be discussed about this issue, but I think that any article purporting to solve the Korean problem needs to mention these...