S. Korea serves model for Afghanistan, others U.S. assists: ex-Obama aide

By Hwang Doo-hyong WASHINGTON, May 16 (Yonhap) -- South Korea should serve as a role model for Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern countries that the United States currently lends helping hands to, Gen. James Jones, former U.S. national security adviser, said Monday. "I just got back from South Korea not long ago, and, you know, what a great success story South Korea is, one that all Korean War veterans should take great pride in," Jones, President Obama's top security adviser until November, told the National Press Club. "That's the kind of ambition we have for other countries that we're trying to help and that other countries are trying to help as well. So let's hope that we can be successful, but let's also remember that we can't want this any more than the people themselves want it in the long term." Jones made his remarks in a speech on the strategic implications of current and continuing developments in the greater Middle East. Obama has pledged to begin withdrawing some of the more than 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan in July, with a complete pullout due by 2014, but some U.S. politicians want Obama to expedite the withdrawal after the shooting death of Osama bin Laden, the architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., in Pakistan early this month. Obama has not yet elaborated on the size and exact timing of the troop withdrawal. Jones's remarks are in tune with Obama, who said in March that "Egypt could transform itself into a democracy on the model of Indonesia, Chile, or South Korea." A sweeping popular uprising toppled the decades-old authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak in February. Similar uprisings have ousted the iron-fisted regime in Tunisia, turned Libya into a civil war zone and brought chaos to several other Middle Eastern countries in recent months. South Korea underwent civil uprisings in the late 1980s that brought an end to the country's decades-old authoritarian rule. Obama and other U.S. officials have often cited South Korea as an example of rags-to-riches progress, noting the role of the U.S. in helping the war-ravaged South Korean people achieve economic growth and democracy. While in Seoul for the G-20 economic summit in November, Obama had "the opportunity to pay tribute to the extraordinary progress that the Republic of Korea has made in the 60 years since the beginning of the Korean War," Ben Rhode, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said at the time. "It's one of the quite astonishing stories of the second half of the 20th century, the economic development of Korea and the development of its democracy, which of course is tied very closely to the strength of our alliance with them," Rhode said. South Korea is the first non-G-7 member advanced economy to host the G-20 economic summit since the outbreak of the economic crisis triggered by the subprime mortgage crisis on Wall Street in late 2008.