“4 for 1—not an equal trade.”
It wouldn’t matter if it were 1 for 1. Negotiating with an unprincipled adversary in this fashion essentially trains them to take high profile hostages whenever they desire a concession from this clueless administration.
When Danny Pearl was taken hostage, Bush didn’t release any high value Al Qaeda operatives. Instead, when Pearl was killed, we went after and convicted Omar Sheikh. The response to this was not an escalating pattern of kidnapping American journalists. Taking a hard line produced a world that arguably was safer for American journalists going forward, however tragic it might have been for Pearl.
Exactly. This just rings the dinner gong.
The worst example of this would be the Gipper’s Arms for Hostages deal that made yanqui-kidnapping big business in Beirut in the eighties.