On Tuesday, ISIS released a video of the beheading of American journalist James Foley. Did the United States cause his death?
That’s the question many people are asking. According to the
New York Times, while European governments have ransomed their citizens from ISIS, the United States and Britain
have refused. American commandos tried to rescue Foley and other prisoners
but failed. Two weeks ago President Obama
authorized U.S. airstrikes on ISIS. The militants say they killed Foley to punish us for the strikes. Critics say it didn’t have to end this way. We could have been more flexible. We could have saved Foley.
When somebody does something awful to you or to a person you care about, it’s natural to react this way. What could you have offered the mugger to keep him from shooting your wife? But that’s the wrong way to look at the situation. The most powerful weapon bad people use to control good people isn’t knives, guns, or bombs. It’s fear. They train you to think about your options
within a framework they control: You make the decisions; they impose the consequences.
If you pay the ransom, you’re not just fueling the kidnap market. As
Slate’s Josh Keating
notes, you’re also funding ISIS’s war and its atrocities against civilians. Callimachi found that al-Qaida and its affiliates reaped a minimum of $125 million in ransoms in the last five years, and $66 million just last year. It’s now al-Qaida’s main revenue stream. And the demands won’t end with money. In addition to Sotloff, ISIS reportedly has
at least three more American hostages it’s threatening to kill. It also has some Brits. The
New York Times says ISIS “has sent a laundry list of demands for the release of the foreigners, starting with money but also prisoner swaps.” Altogether, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, ISIS and other extremists in Syria have
about 20 foreign journalists.
I fear for those reporters. I’m horrified by Foley’s death, and I know Sotloff is probably next. But we have to think about the next 20 hostages, and the 20 after that. Every time we ransom a reporter, we put a price tag on the next one. The only way to extinguish the market in kidnapping is to make it worthless. That means refusing to pay. And what about the Iraqi and Syrian civilians ISIS slaughters every day? If we halt our airstrikes to appease ISIS, as the executioner in the video implicitly demands, aren’t we sacrificing them for a few Americans?
) But what are they (ISIS) thinking? I'm asking a serious question here.
