I have only just noticed this. But I agree with it, and I think the point is good enough to last way longer than a fortnight. It is from our own Natalie Solent on what to do about hostage taking:
Iraqi gunmen of the Mujahideen Brigades, a previously unknown group, have taken three Japanese citizens captive and say that Japan must pull out its troops or the prisoners will be burned alive.
Well, it worked in Spain. It worked in Somalia. The question is, do we keep it working?
I say, no. Kill the Muhajideen brigades. God willing the hostages might be saved, but if they are killed too, better a bullet than being burned alive and better a world where they die thus than one where the tactic of threatening hostages with death by torture works. As I said in January when Israel more-than-foolishly released many terrorists in exchange for an Israeli hostage, “Yes, of course I’d feel and speak very differently if it was my relative held hostage. Do you think I’m made of stone? But what is that to the purpose?” Think not only of the hostage we see now but of the next, and the next, and the next – because unless war is waged and won on this tactic, that is what there will be.
Whenever I line up next to, or myself say, things like this, I recall Saki’s phrase about the reckless courage of the non-combatant. As Natalie asks, what if a relative of hers were a hostage? What if she was? What if I was?
Nevertheless, I truly believe that she is right, and there is no future in giving in to these people, and not too abysmal a hope of a present for any hostages if the captors and their fortress are stormed rather than negotiated with.
I agree. I’d feel terrible if a loved one were one of the hostages too, but I don’t think it’s in anyone’s long term safety interests to yield to terrorists.
Once you yield to terrorists’ demands, they know you have a weak spot and will exploit it.
I think the present tactic is “divide and conquer.”
The only troops that are in a position to deal militarily with hostage-takings are American and British, but they can hardly do it without the support of the country that the hostages are from. The various opposition groups in Iraq have seen that U.S. and British resolve is pretty strong, so they’re probably now going to focus on those countries whose resolve they think is weaker.
If the governments of the hostages endorse a military approach to dealing with the hostage-takers, and if they do it every time, that will show their resolve. If those governments don’t endorse a military approach (every time) it will show their lack of resolve, and will probably divide the coalition. And if the U.S. or the UK uses a military approach without endorsement by the government of the hostages it will definitely divide the coalition.
We shouldn’t personalise this by asking ‘what if it were my brother, mother, father?’. That is not the way to fight a war – especially a war as nebulous as this and with such a dishonourable, fanatical, medieval enemy.
Natalie is absolutely correct. Tragically for those involved, we cannot endanger entire populations by negotiating with terrorists to save three or four lives. They’d be back for more.
Once you’ve paid the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane – as Spain is learning.
The way to defeat these people is to crush them. Even if it means killing them all.
Of course she’s right. Have a whole nation appease a gang of savage murderers?!! You do not negotiate with criminals, wherever they are. You pursue, and catch or destroy them. Never negotiate with thugs or accept human lives as bargaining chips
Why do so many people sound almost apologetic when arguing that hostage-blackmail should be rejected outright and always? It’s not cold hearted, it’s simply the sensible thing to do.
I recall in the late seventies or early eighties a friend of my father, who worked high up in anti-Provo activities for the military. This was in a period of significant a significant PIRA campaign was going on. The man, I think he was a colonel, was a known target, his name had been found on a number of captured lists and was extremely worried about being captured or murdered. However his instructions to his wife were straightforward.
“If I am held hostage and you do anything to comply with the demands of the terrorists, the moment I am free I will divorce you”.
Fortunately nothing untoward ever happened to him, but he was deadly serious. That example has stuck with me ever since as the way in which the personal aspect of these matters has to be dealt with. I only hope if it ever happened to me or mine I would be as steadfast.
Is this another example of ‘cuture clash’?
We don’t understand ‘their’ lack of respect for life, vis-a-vis suicide bombers. They don’t understand our cold-hearted, ‘let ’em die’, attitude viv-a-vis hostages.
Is this ironic – or what?
They say “martyrs”, we say “victims”, perhaps we are not so very different after all? could all be just a question of language…
They don’t understand our cold-hearted, ‘let ’em die’, attitude viv-a-vis hostages
What make you think so? They believe they can manipulate the perceivedly-soft-hearted and morally decadent West precisely because there are so many of us who baulk at the idea of making painful small sacrifices in return for very real long term gains. They know they wouldn’t change their behaviour for the sake of a few Islamic ‘hostages’ in our hands, yet they expect us to do just that, precisely because we value human life more than they do.
It’s a potential Achilles heel for all the West, and one that has already cost marked-man Spain dearly, but thankfully we still have leaders like Bush, Blair and (hopefully) Berlusconi who know enough about history and human nature, and have the balls to defy the shrill appeaseniks, who will not surrender to blackmail
What if I was a hostage? I think the point was well made by Fabrizio Quattrocchi, when he was taken hostage. Would that I should have the courage to face eternity as well.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, Ernest Young, you are just baiting! ‘They say “martyrs” ‘ because they are self-defining according to an insane sect. Piloting an airplane into skyscraper in the sure knowledge of killing thousands of innocent people isn’t martyrdom. It’s mass murder. Strapping explosives round your waist and blowing yourself up in a crowded marketplace is not an act of martyrdom. It’s an act of lunatic aggression and bullying. We say “victims” because the people murdered by religious maniacs were innocently going about their lives. They didn’t deserve to be murdered.
The two are not consonant and you know it.
Ernest Young wrote “They don’t understand our cold-hearted, ‘let ’em die’, attitude viv-a-vis hostages.” and implied a similarity to the ‘we love death’ attitude of the suicide bombers.
This makes sense if your anatomy is such that your brain is located in your gut, your skull is hollow and you totally substitute emotion for thought.
Our attitude is the only one that will minimize the loss of life – that is the whole point of steeling ourselves to resist the killer’s threats and demands.
The suicide bombers are interested only in maximizing death and suffering. There is no resemblence between them and ourselves.
Of course you never know till you’re there… but I think if I were being held hostage, I’d much prefer taking my chances with friendly fire, and the satisfaction of knowing my captors were getting a good thrashing, than potentially being executed for their cause by any method… let alone burning or such.
“The suicide bombers are interested only in maximizing death and suffering.”
…But only amongst those they consider to be their *enemies*. In that respect they are little different from us; willing to accept some ‘collateral damage’ (iraqi civilians/innocent muslims) in order to get the important targets (westerners, western collaborators), just as we were willing to sacrifice hundreds of Iraqis & Afgan people’s lives in order to get Saddam and Bin Laden.
This idea that the suicide bombers just want death as an end in itself is, I suspect, quite a misconception. One that helps us feel righteous for sure, and which allows us to condemn our enemies unequivocally, but in the end probably quite inaccurate. I strongly feel one should always assess one’s enemy & his motivations as realistically as possible. Getting carried away & portraying him as the devil himself, motivated primarily by a love of death & destruction, doesn’t do any of us any good unless it’s true, and i’m inclined to believe it’s not.
(btw, i am not suggesting anyone who deliberately blows up civilians is anything less than evil; just that he’s maybe not motivated by the same “haha!! evil! what fun!” type ideas that a true devil might find appealing)
A_t – back from swinging on a star and now swinging on a tangent. Could you tell us who portrayed terrorists as gloating, “Haha, evil! What fun!”?
I don’t think anyone in the West, other than Islamofascist-lovers, thinks the Muslim attachment to death is anything other than sincere lunacy. They don’t think they’re having fun. It’s all a deadly adolescent mission. The fun comes later with those 72 retread virgins.
They have said constantly that we love life and they love death. When people with ammunition say things like that, my personal philosophy is to take them at their word.
Question – how difficult would it be to implant explosives in a person, and wire them to the heart? if a captive is tortured to death, he explodes, taking the tortureres with him?
Just a thought…
I think the key to “What if it were you or your family?” is that it isn’t me this time, but if we go in soft it will be me text time! If the amount of hostage takings were a constant or were not influenced by previous resolutions then the “we will not negotiate” philosophy would be absurd. In answer to the phrase “How would you like it if it was your family?” we should use the phrase: “I don’t want it to be my family next time… so send in the SWAT team.” The idea is we shouldn’t get to a state where we have to mull over this question as anything more than a hypothetical.
Of course in Canada we thoroughly negotiate to convince the captors that the Canadian hostage isn’t a Jew. Aren’t we moral?
Verity-
You properly challenged A_t’s statement that someone portrayed terrorists as saying “Haha, evil! What fun!”?
I think he was responding to my statement that the suicide bombers are only interested in death and suffering. Regardless of their ‘higher’ motivations, I reitertate that they are only interested in death and suffering. For if they really wanted to spread Islam, help the Palestinians, oppose the great satan USA etc. etc., then expending their own lives and killing and maiming miscellaneous innocents (largely selected by random fate) is an idiotic and largely ineffective way to do it.
I’ll go further: I believe that these people, deep down, are in fact saying “Haha, evil! What fun!” We have had more than our own share of adolescent posturing in the West. The juvenile ‘Goths’ who were responsible for the Columbine High School massacre were not much different from the suicide bombers either in outlook or result. If one considers the adults in Hollywood, in record companies and in bands who cynically use and profit from these young halfwits, the analogy becomes even closer.
Once when I was a student at Michigan during the late 1960’s, William Rusher of National Review came and gave a talk while one of our interminable pretentious ‘teach-ins’ was forcibly occupying the university administration building. He commented that, “They are making believe that they are storming the Winter Palace”. A lot of adolescents have trouble growing up. If you are really good at make-believe, you can maintain the illusion right up to the instant when the suicide belt or the car bomb detonates.
The premise of the hostage taker is that we value life more than they do and that we are weak. It’s amazing that even after 9/11, there are those who believe negotiation is possible with radicals who are sworn to our destruction. It’s painfully obvious that no one, not even their own women and children (thus, why would ours be any different?), are safe from their fervor. The only way to deal with them is at the point of a gun.
Doug – “I reitertate that they are only interested in death and suffering. For if they really wanted to spread Islam, help the Palestinians, oppose the great satan USA etc. etc., then expending their own lives and killing and maiming miscellaneous innocents (largely selected by random fate) is an idiotic and largely ineffective way to do it.”
Doug – they think they are getting the personal attention of their god. They’re going for the last act curtain call! “Look at me! I’m taking my bows! Am I a rave, or what?”
Norman, you are correct. To have a belief that negotiation is possible is a denial. It’s not.
Verity-
“they think they are getting the personal attention of their god”
I agree. Though I’m not sure if you are agreeing with me or not.
Given the overwhelming proportion of the suicide bombers who are adolescents or at least very slightly mature males, I have a hard time discounting posturing as a motivation.
Perhaps we are both right:
Getting attention through adolescent posturing as a religious statement!
Those hostages were released on the 16th. Lucky for them, some Muslim clerics talked their kidnappers into releasing them before they all got blown up by some Crusader looking to send a message to terrorists.
I do agree that taking hostages and threatening to harm them in order to get their government to do something is insane, though. You’d have to be pretty delusional to believe that any government would ever allow its policies to be altered merely by concern for the safety of its subjects!
Verity,
Not really ‘baiting’ anyone, just musing really on how perspectives can alter thinking and outcome. Just exploring a different line of thought from the ‘same ‘ole, same ‘ole’ rhetoric.
Of course there is a world of difference between volunteering for self destruction, (‘martyr’ is their description), and is, at best, a delusional personal choice, and being hauled off the street to be held captive, (‘victim’ is my description), while awaiting the decision of your countrymen as to your freedom, and ultimately, your life.
The former is a personal choice, the latter a collective state decision.
I have for most of my life been in favour of ‘no negotiation’, but lately, having seen the actions of, and listened to the spiel of the Left, both in the USA and in Europe, (especially Europe), I am not so sure that I would personally make the supreme sacrifice in order to ensure ‘their’ freedom of speech, elitism, etc, etc.
The idea of freedom and personal liberty, which I have always believed in, has long been replaced by the distorted socialist version, and they are two very different animals .
At the end of the day it would seem that they have far more to lose than me, or mine, and yet they continue to jeopardise the very freedoms which I value, and for which we (not them), are fighting.
While the Western Coalition is fighting an international war, the Left are more intent on fighting an internal political war, and by sabotaging any concerted effort at winning the larger conflict, they hope to achieve control of the Home front.
It appears to me that Socialism (a generality), places about as much value on the life of the individual, as does the Islamic fanatic, – anything for the cause…. (yes, I have been reading that book on Mao), although, in the western case, where the State makes the decision, the person making the decision is not the individual actually invoved in making the sacrifice.
In short (!!), Europe is not worth the dying for, America, well maybe, but if nothing is done about the extreme left (the Hollywood clique, and large parts of Academia), it will also not be worth the sacrifice. A sacrifice for the commonn cause is only justified if it is valued by all the benficaries.
Maybe that is the difference between their thinking and ours.
I thought at the time that the proper response for the Japanese was to say that every week that the hostages were not released would increase the number of Japanese troops in Iraq and if they were not released within the month, they would be made available for combat duty.
As I understand things, this is much the same way that connected Iraqis deal with such things. The kidnappers are notified what clan they are messing with and if they return the victim unharmed and pay restitution, they are permitted to escape with their lives.
What a bunch of armchair warriors you all are!! 🙂
“They don’t think they’re having fun. It’s all a deadly adolescent mission. The fun comes later with those 72 retread virgins.”
Exactly. We aren’t dealing with your everyday bank robber here. We’re talking about religious extremists who will not stop each time we appease their demands. They won’t stop until all of our women are veiled, alcohol is eliminated, and we all read the Quran and bow down to Allah. Nothing less will actually appease them. Therefore, regardless of your relation to the hostages, the only way to stop these terrorists is to kill them before they kill themselves using explosives to create another disaster.
What a bunch of armchair warriors you all are!! 🙂
Ernest, I have been blooded and drawn blood in personal combat, and seen shots fired in anger. My wife has fired a gun in self defense. We both believe in the concept of ferryman’s fee, and I sincerely belief that were either or both of us were in such a situation we would not weigh personal safety very highly against the ultimate good.
triticale,
Me too, I totally agree with you, and I have been in similar situations myself. I was just having a little rag on some of the knee jerk reactions above.
I am sure they are all good people with the best of intentions, but, as you and I both know, the spontaneous action is not always the best.
To my mind the second worst thing to happen to a person is to take the life of another. The conscience is a powerful thing, the older I get, the bigger part it plays in my life.
While still prepared to defend myself and mine, I am not quite so prepared to adopt the general idea of the State offering me, or anyone else for that matter, as a sacrifice for the ‘common good’. If it’s my decision, that ‘s fine, but not on the all too casual say-so of some faceless wonder a thousand miles away.
ernest,
I made a calculated decision, not a knee-jerk reaction. I have been pondering this issue of appeasing the terrorists ever since 9/11. I have come to the conclusion that:
They won’t stop until all of our women are veiled, alcohol is eliminated, and we all read the Quran and bow down to Allah.
We have to face the facts: we are up against a group that will not cease the violence until we all convert to their religion. They want to make Islam a law. As much as I dislike taking the life of another, I still think that there is no possible alternative to appease the Islamofascists through compromise, and I am certainly not going to convert to the Muslim religion simply to make a bunch of loony political criminals happy.
I understand that things might be different if I had been personally involved, but I doubt it. Right now, if I were one of the hostages, I wouldn’t like to see my government catering to these people to save me. Once they realize that this will work, they will continue the hostage-taking until every last American is Muslim.
A_t wrote: “This idea that the suicide bombers just want death as an end in itself is, I suspect, quite a misconception. One that helps us feel righteous for sure, and which allows us to condemn our enemies unequivocally, but in the end probably quite inaccurate.”
A_t displays a serious lack of knowledge about radical Islam here. In fact death is very much the point, as matyrdom confers instant access to paradise in their thinking. Islamic radicals have repeatedly claimed that not only do they not fear death they welcome it. This is not a misconception on our part, but a fundamental aspect of radical Islam. In this respect radical Islam is essentially a death cult. It worships violence and death for there own sake. While their may be secondary “political” motivations invloved in terrorism, these are less inportant to the Muslim than the glory of death, both their own, and those of the infidels. As London based (!!!) Islamic cleric Omar Bakri Muhammed said, “the life of an unbeliever has no value”.
With respect, this is all babbling. Let’s look at the facts.
1. Anyone know of an Israeli citizen kidnapped recently? No?
2. How long did it take the Iraqi bastards to release the Russians they kidnapped recently? (My guess is, as soon as they realized that the hostages were Russian.)
Neither Russia nor Israel bargains with terrorists when it comes to hostages.
3. Anyone remember how the Italian Red Brigades did when they kidnapped politicians and such in the 1970s? Because the Italian government was set on negotiating, the BR got other terrorists released, lots of money… and still whacked the hostages.
So… what was the dilemma, again?
Ernest, I must say that I agree with you that the debased, socialist Britain of today is not worth the sacrifice of life. The people passively allowed the socialists to lead them by the nose – look how eagerly they welcomed an obvious charlatan like Tony Blair to be their leader; and his cabinet of incompetents and fools went unrebuked for almost seven years – and have allowed their country to be dismantled while they looked on dully.
On the other hand, that isn’t the point that Natalie was making, if I read her right. I think it was the old Danegeld point. Plus, with what we know of these people, there is no guarantee that after your government had met all the terrorists’ demands for your release, they’d go ahead and kill you anyway because the life of an infidel has the same value as that of a fly one would spray.
Finally, a lot of this fanaticism and supporting a violent cause comes from their culture of repression. Women terrorists exist, to be sure, but in miniscule numbers. It’s mainly adolescent and young men and they live in such an insanely circumscribed society – they can’t even shake hands with a woman; I mean, how crazy is that? – that the male urge to action becomes totally perverted. Imagine being a young man and living in a society that is, in effect, totally male. The streets are filled with males and mobile black blobs. Everywhere, all they see is the faces of other men. They never even get a chance to try to make themselves agreeable to a girl or woman. No wonder those retread notional virgins hold such allure that they’re worth dying for!
Kim,
The hostages aren’t Russian. They’re Japanese. The Iraqis can carry out their promises without worrying about alliances.
I have a vague memory from my childhood about a hijacked airplane that landed in Moscow during the days of the USSR and demanded more fuel. The Soviets responded by sending a MiG over to blow the plane up on the runway, passengers and all.
Desired result – no more hijackers landing in Moscow.
Ron – When I was living in Singapore, six Sikh separatists hijacked a plane from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore – a 45-minute flight – and ordered the pilot to fly to Australia – nine hours away.
The pilot managed to persuade them that they would have to land to refuel and the Singapore contingency plans for hijack slipped smoothly into place. They parked on the perimeter, a long way from the terminals. The terrorists demanded to speak to Benazir Bhutto, and the government duly rang her to inform her that some Paki citizens had hijacked an international flight, but her servant said she was sleeping and couldn’t be wakened.
OK. Trained negotiators spoke by phone to the terrorists, while plans were working in the background. The terrorists got impatient, wanting to know why the plane hadn’t refuelled yet, and the negotiators put them off with som BS. Finally, after three or four hours, the terrorists, who had been drinking whisky throughout, started splashing whisky round the cabin and telling the negotiators that they were going to start killing one passenger every so many minutes.
Suddenly, every emergency door on the plane crashed inward simultaneously and armed forces swung in the doors shouting, “Get down! We’re Singaporeans! Get down!” A couple of seconds later, six dead terrorists were lying in the aisles. A few seconds after that, the passengers were sliding down the emergency chutes and being given cups of tea. It was announced later that morning, when people were getting ready for work or were already driving to work. Talk about mind boggling!
Result. Again, no one has ever hijacked another plane to Changi or a Singapore Airlines plane anywhere in the world.
PS – I can’t remember what the technology was – infra red or sonic – but the government had a way of telling where each highjacker was in the plane and tracking their movements. So when the snipers swung in, the terrorists were already in their sights.
You just hit the nail on the head, Verity.
-Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune
How much energy is bottled up in the young men of nations living under strict Sharia Law? Obviously a lot, 9/11 gave us our first real taste. The central fact of the situation that NO ONE wants to address is that this is ultimately a matter of Religious Engineering, and that’s just about as un-PC a topic as one can get!
Forcible seperation of Mosque and State is required in Sharia based theocracies, and repression in secular Arab dictatorships must be eased (hello, Egypt and Syria!) Those are both pretty tall orders, no?
But WMD or no, Iraq (Uruk, or more anciently still, Ur) IS the place where almost all the fresh water in the entire middle east comes from, and hence controlling it gives one the ability to control all of Mesopotamia (go ask the Marsh Arabs what they think about hydrologic despotism!)
Not wanting to fuck with his fellow Arabs (he was the Russians proxy in the Cold War, Saudi was ours) didn’t stop him from trying to pound the Persians for 8 years after they booted the Shah and switched from the US column to freelance thuggin’.
The point? Saddam was dangerous because he controlled the linchpin of the entire area. We do now.
It’s pretty much a pre-requisite to any swamp draining of the area that’s to be attempted, and that’s the unseemly bit that the neocons don’t like talked about.
Not that I don’t in most ways agree with that strategy, I just think that it’s been botched (see, Iraqi Army disbandment), and that I care a hell of a lot less if Attorney General was a seperately elected position, not appointed (how’s THAT for a Constitutional Amendment idea! Ashcroft lost to a corpse the last time he stood for election!)
Kim and Verity are both correct in their observation that terrorists don’t take hostages when experience shows them that they won’t be negotiated with.
However, it’s also true that terrorists will sometimes move beyond hostage taking under those conditions. That’s precisely how suicide bombing became so popular with the Palestinians. Once Israel refused to negotiate with kidnappers, Palestinian terrorists moved to a higher level of terror.
I’m not arguing in favour of negotiating, however, nor against the policy of not negotiating. But under such a policy we have to try to anticipate the next step. The terrorists in Iraq will probably not just give up if we stop negotiating with them. They’ll move on to some other strategy, which will also be designed to divide the coalition and pander to anti-US sentiment among Iraqis.
Verity, the SQ commandos are so good not just because they wore infrared goggles(IIRC), but they had a full scale 747 mockup at their training camp at Changi. I was there, and toured the place a bit when I was in vocation training. Legend has it that the commandos were taking roll call after 5 seconds of entry durig the hostage incident.
There was a very impressive exercise where the whole platoon was invited to sit into a dark room, and we were told it would be a demonstration with real bullets. We were shown dummy mockups of hostage takers, and then told to sit down as supposed hostages. The lights were turned off. Then there was a bang, and we could hear their entry. A series of more bangs, flashes in the dark, less than 2 seconds in duration. Then when everybody thought it was safe to move, another few bangs, and we managed to catch glimpses of more dummies springing up to be shot away.
Game over for the dummy mockups. Nice round holes in their heads, and smoking carbines in the hands of the black suit commandos.
I sometimes regret the fact that I wore spectacles, or else I could have been a commando too. Other than my eyes, I was considered peak physical condition. In the end, I ended up in the second ‘best’ vocation, military policeman. Grrr…
The Wobbly Guy
Wobbly, wow!
I talked to two of the people who were on the flight, one in First and one in Economy, which is why I know so much about it. (Didn’t realise the snipers were wearing infra red goggles though!) The man in First told me when the doors crashed inward and he heard voices shouting, “Get down!” for a crazy moment, he thought it may be more terrorists, but then, from his crouched position on the floor, he saw Singapore government issue military boots rush past him and his heart leapt up. This in the split second after hearing the gunshots and before they shouted “We’re Singaporeans!” The whole exercise with the plane took mere seconds from the time the doors crashed in to looking around and seeing the terrorists lying dead.
I do know the snipers had been gathered under the belly of the plane for around two hours, waiting for the word to go. The government was intent on getting the passengers out safely and tried negotiating with the terrorist (obviously with the intention of killing them after the passengers were out), but as the terrorists got drunker and more incoherent and had stated their intention of killing off the passengers, they decided to go.
I’m not a Singaporean, but it certainly made me proud to be living there.
My favorite tale of how to deal with hostage takers was back in Lebannon in the ’80s. I can’t remember WHICH silly Islamic group it was, but in the space of a day or 2 they kidnapped (seperately) at least one American, 3 IIRC Russians, and some other nationalities.
We Americans hemmed and hawed, and nothing much happened. The Russians delievered the head of the kidnappers organization to the doorstep of one of their safehouses with his balls in his mouth, and a note pinned to his chest to the effect of “release all Russians nationals immediately, or this is the least of what will happen to you”.
Needless to say the Russians were home very soon, and the other nations hostages languished.