Publications
Partners
Unbeknownst to some, two Japanese nationals are like to be executed by ISIS’s Jihad John in what has been a failed attempt by the terrorist group to secure US$200-million from the Japanese Government.
Wailings of relatives and people who assume that a single human life has infinite value aside, Japan has taken the right attitude, one embodied by many Western nations: “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
I predict that in hours or days to come, YouTube will again be abuzz with the gore videos of the two captive Japanese being beheaded in another ISIS provocation to the free world.
The loss of life is tragic, but a necessary sacrifice if the free world is to maintain the pressure on ISIS. Nothing, no negotiations, no please for mercy, no nothing will dissuade ISIS’s long-term goal of slitting the throats of every free person in the world, in their own countries.
There are shortsighted individuals who do the selfish and foolish thing: They put themselves in the situation of the family members of the two Japanese hostages, and then imagine that the terrorist’s demands must be met to save the ‘priceless’ life of a loved one.
Let me not even pretend to be polite about this, but such fantasizing about preserving two lives is extremely dangerous, and it does not take a psychopath to explain why. I dare say, only a psychopath would expect that Japan honor ISIS’s terms to release the hostages marked for imminent execution.
How many more hostages (even ones that don’t make the headlines) do you think ISIS will capture, torture, and kill if it got its hands on $200-million in funding?
The Japanese government is in a situation that no leader ever wishes to be in; what psychologists call the ‘trolley cart conundrum,’ a situation where death is unavoidable, the only question is how many lives are lost.
In such situations, there is no question about what decision must be made. Any attempt must be made to weaken those who force such circumstances to prevail around the negotiating table.
The only way to weaken ISIS is to prevent them from getting their hands on $200-million (and all the destructive, life-taking force that buys)! There should be no questioning of this course of action, because if there is it can only be labelled psychopathic and even suicidal.
This is why being a leader is so hard. There are days where you can’t stop tragedy, death, or suffering, you can only hope to limit it by clenching your fist and remaining brave in the face of threats and the repercussions of those threats.
No doubt this latest demand of ISIS shows that it is experiencing some crisis to ask for such a grand amount of money. If anyone were to bail out the two hostages, they would give ISIS a few more fully loaded magazines to insert into their AK-47s.
We, the free world, are fighting a foe, not just on the physical battle field, but on an ideological one, as well. Losing a battle on either front will embolden ISIS and ensure that more people end up in the same tragic predicament as the two Japanese captives that have been making the headlines in recent days.
We are facing a barbarous foe with absolutely no conscience. There can be no more negotiation with such an adversary as there could be with a beast.
Undoubtedly the lobbyists will come down hard on the Japanese government when the inevitable execution commences. “More should have been done” and “the ransom should have been paid” will echo across not just Japan, but everywhere those who do not consider the dire repercussions of giving in to unreasonable demands in which there is no win-win situation congregate to protest.
Let us hope sanity prevails in this instance.
