It appears that Iran isn’t the only Islamist entity that is about to get an infusion of cash from the Obama administration. With the announcement yesterday that the U.S. has revised its policy that seeks to prevent the families of hostages held by terrorists from paying ransom, the president has just given those criminals another incentive to target Americans. The president’s order also will mandate that the government provide more support and information for these unfortunate families, something that should have already been done a long time ago. But while the policy shift has been generated in no small measure by the enormous sympathy felt by most Americans for the captives’ relatives, the real reason this is happening isn’t purely humanitarian. It has also been dictated by the exposure of the administration’s hypocrisy in paying a huge ransom in released terrorist prisoners for the freedom of Bowe Bergdahl, an American deserter that wound up in the hands of the Taliban. That blunder was bad enough, but by opening a way for Americans to start pouring money into the coffers of ISIS and other Islamist groups in hostage ransoms, President Obama has again made it clear that this administration isn’t prepared to do what it takes to defeat these killers.
There’s little question that most Americans both sympathize and identify with the situation that families like the Foleys, whose son James was beheaded by ISIS last year after rescue and ransom attempts failed. The fact that the Foleys and other families whose loved ones were held by terrorists were threatened with prosecution by the government if they attempted to pay a ransom for their release is seen as an egregious overreach by a heavy-handed administration that hadn’t the guts or smarts to rescue American hostages while refusing to let them be ransomed.
The Foleys and other hostage families were merely doing what any of us would do in their position. If my child or yours were in the hands of the enemy, any parent would move heaven and earth, and sell every principle we held about fighting terrorism down the drain, in order to ensure their safe release. But there is a difference between the impulse of a parent and the duty of a government that is supposed to be waging a war on the hostage takers.
One of the reasons behind the success of ISIS in recent years, other, that is, from the Obama administration’s precipitate withdrawal from Iraq and refusal to take action in Syria when it might have forestalled the victory of these terrorists, is their ability to generate huge amounts of revenue by taking Westerners prisoner. Most European nations have paid the ransoms demanded turning a ragtag bunch of terrorists that Obama once dismissed as the “JV” for al-Qaeda into a force that now controls much of the territory of two nations.
But the United States has rightly refused to add to ISIS’s wealth. Saying no to families in such distress is difficult, and better leaders than President Obama have sometimes succumbed to the pressure to salve their pain. President Reagan did so when he approved a guns-for-hostages swap with Iran. Various Israeli governments, including the one led by current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have traded thousands of convicted terrorists to gain the release of a handful of Israeli prisoners. The reason for those swaps was understandable, and, in Netanyahu’s case, almost a political necessity given the outcry from Israelis demanding action to save kidnaped soldier Gilad Shalit. But that didn’t make them wise decisions.
Opening the door to American ransom payments to ISIS is even worse than those admittedly egregious examples of supposedly tough government jettisoning their principles in order to avoid being seen as hardhearted in the face of the tears of parents. Unlike Iran in the 1980s or even Hamas, ISIS is a dynamic organization that has shown itself capable of spreading its control over the Middle East. Though it can be argued that ISIS and the Taliban and every other Islamist terrorist group is already bent on capturing as many Americans as possible, the president has just given them an extra incentive to seek out U.S. citizens, perhaps by expanding its area of activity to places outside of its nominal control in the region in search of prey.
What’s more the real reason why the administration has been pressured into bending on this issue has less to do with sympathy for the Foleys than outrage over Obama’s hypocrisy in letting five terrorist killers with American blood on their hands go free to obtain Bergdahl’s release. The administration’s argument has been that regardless of Bergdhal’s disgraceful behavior, the United States was still obligated to bring him home. Perhaps so, but not at the cost of undermining the war the country has been waging against the Taliban. While Bergdahl may have been suffering, the notion that the plight of prisoners of war must take precedence over measures taken to win the war they were fighting in is indefensible. Such ransoms also give the lie to the idea that the U.S. is serious about fighting and defeating its enemies.
But instead of admitting they made a mistake with Bergdahl — something this president seems incapable of doing under any circumstances — the administration has doubled down on its error by extending tolerance towards other measures that will benefit the nation’s enemies.
We all should agree that families like the Foleys and others placed in that awful situation deserve to be treated with greater care than they have previously been given by the administration. After all, no one was ever going to actually be prosecuted for trying to ransom a relative. But the proper response to their tragedy is a greater determination to rescue hostages and to kill their captors. If American counterterror policy now shifts to one that focuses more on alleviating the pain of hostage families, then the only thing we can be sure of is that there were will be even more grieving Americans in the future than in the past. Like Iran, which is happy to accept U.S. appeasement that will lead to a massive infusion of cash due to the relaxation of economic sanctions, ISIS will be cheering the president’s decision.
