Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death

While the U.S. government has a firm policy against paying ransom demands to free American hostages of terrorists, under the table and with very little fanfare, European governments (other than the U.K. which stands with the U.S. policy) have routinely succumbed to the pressure to pay for terrorists to release their captured citizens. We know of specific instances from both France and Spain, but clearly these efforts are not heavily publicized. By some accounts, al Qaeda alone has reaped the benefits of an estimated $125 million in such European-generated ransom payments over the past five years.

As mega-million dollar tankers and cargo ships have been taken by Somali pirates, shipping companies (or their insurance carriers) have forked over billions in the last few years, an estimated $360 million just last year alone. Security measures, insurance costs and re-routing costs have made global shipping considerably more expensive: “Piracy has impeded the delivery of shipments and increased shipping expenses, costing an estimated $6.6 to $6.9 billion a year in global trade according to Oceans Beyond Piracy (OBP).” Wikipedia.

Rescue missions involving special ops attacks – such as the failed effort to extract journalist James Foley from Syria – are vastly more expensive, but at least they send a message to those willing to take the risk of taking U.S. citizens overseas. American authorities are quick to point out that paying ransoms only encourages kidnapping, but that admonition seems to fall on deaf ears in Europe. Indeed, this demonic Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL), a fundamentalist “caliphate” that defines intolerant ultra-violence, hardly seems to be kidnapping for the money. With an estimated $2 million/day generated from petroleum revenues from captured oil-generating regions, these uber-terrorists seem much more interested in terrifying, intimidating and humiliating the West and locals who might oppose them.

Even as they in fact “offered” to release Mr. Foley – denied by American authorities – for cash ($100 million), they probably got more mileage in intimidation by publicly beheading the hapless American. A second captured American journalist, Steven Sotloff, was forced to watch his comrade in this bloody execution. Sotloff seemed to be almost certainly the next to die by this grisly practice. Demands for ransom or for the U.S. military to stand down from their air strikes are likely to be ignored, as the Islamic State contemplates Sotloff’s demise, another disgusting video photo opp. The orange jumpsuits that these victims were forced to wear mirrored the outfits worn by military prisoners at America’s terrorist prison, Gitmo.

The fact that some countries pay ransoms while others do not seems to exacerbate the problem. “While government and counterterrorism officials insist that paying ransoms only perpetuates the problem, the policy has meant that captured Americans have little chance of being released. A handful succeeded in running away, and even fewer were rescued in special operations. The rest are either held indefinitely — or else killed.

“In an opinion article for Reuters, David Rohde, a columnist for the news service and a former foreign correspondent for The Times who was kidnapped by the Taliban, said that the uneven approach to ransoms may have cost Mr. Foley his life.

“‘The payment of ransoms and abduction of foreigners must emerge from the shadows. It must be publicly debated,’ wrote Mr. Rohde, who escaped his seven-month detention by the Taliban only when he climbed out a window and freed himself. ‘American and European policy makers should be forced to answer for their actions.’” New York Times, August 20^th. Even as President Obama threatened to find justice against the perpetrators of this vile execution, to eliminate this “cancer” of violent intolerance in the Middle East, there are few actions that the Islamic State wouldn’t take to rattle their power over those who oppose them. Hitler would have been proud.

Despite our massive military and the availability of well-trained special ops troops, we seem hamstrung in how to use them and powerless to stop such terrorists from pretty much having their way. These threats are clearly the way of the future, effective intimidation that often takes the heart and soul out of soldiers assigned to fight against these despicable terrorist forces. We need to rethink who we are, how we can deal much more effectively with this new world stage of terrorism and we need to act in concert with other nations to create a more unified approach to this trend.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we live in different times requiring vastly different tactics.