I remember a story about the cold-war soviets havinng one of their people kidnapped for ransom- The soviets responded by tossing on of the terrorists into a furnace live - with the promise of more until their man was released
He was released and it never happened again.
It’s a weird world where I find myself rooting for the Russian Leader
A better POTUS would seize an advantage here. Ours won’t.
There are many variants of that story, but here is one:
http://suite101.com/a/the-kgb-counter-terrorism-operation-in-lebanon
“In October 1985 Alpha Group was tasked with a counter-terrorism hostage-rescue operation in Beirut Lebanon. Four Russian diplomats had been kidnapped there by a fundamentalist Islamic group which called itself the Islamic Liberation Organization, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. It has been speculated that this hostage-taking was revenge for Russia’s support of Syria which was engaged in the shelling of Islamist militants in the Lebanese city of Tripoli. They threatened to kill the hostages one at a time unless the Soviets pressured it’s ally in Damascus to put a stop to attacks on the militants in Tripoli.”
“When Alpha arrived on the ground they found that one of the four hostages had already been shot in the head and left in a trash dump. Alpha Group quickly responded by doing something which sent a very clear and unambiguous message to those hostage-takers. Through their knowledge of who the hostage-takers were they tracked down and located one of their kinsmen and proceeded to castrate him and then send on the dismembered body parts to the hostage-takers! But not only that, with that they also sent a note indicating they knew some other relatives of the hostage-takers who could also be hurt in similar ways.”
“Seeing how serious the Russians were the hostage-takers promptly released these hostages — dropping them off near the Soviet Embassy. No more Russians were taken hostage in Lebanon for another twenty years as a result of the Alpha Groups ruthlessness when it came with dealing with those people.”
My vote: The Russians should carpet bomb every known terrorist training camp in the world, as much as possible simultaneously, and then ask the CIA/NSA (informally, not going through State or the White House) for a list of locations they missed.
When someone like Putin says, "We will strongly and decisively continue the battle against terrorists until their total annihilation...” I would look for total annihilation of terrorists.
Rooting! Hell, I'm waiting for free agency.
Wish we could trade ours while the world still believes in him and draft him.
Sure is. What's worse, while our former enemies are fighting AQ, our leadership armed and supported AQ in Libya and Egypt, and wanted to do the same in Syria.