Friday, June 6, 2014

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.

When you accept hostages as currency, you create a commodity market for hostages. When you accept American soldiers or Israeli soldiers as currency… well we already know the rest of the story.

A Taliban commander close to the negotiations over the release of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl told TIME by telephone Thursday that the deal made to secure Bergdahl’s release has made it more appealing for fighters to capture American soldiers and other high-value targets.
“It’s better to kidnap one person like Bergdahl than kidnapping hundreds of useless people,” the commander said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media. “It has encouraged our people. Now everybody will work hard to capture such an important bird.”

That’s exactly the outcome we wanted. Right?

We wanted the Taliban to work hard to kidnap more soldiers while boosting their morale?
This is why negotiating with terrorists is a bad idea. The whole point of terror tactics is to create this conundrum. When the tactics pay off, you get more terror.

Filed Under: The Point