Ethicist Peter Singer penned this provocative piece (registration may be required) in the Wednesday Los Angeles Times. Journalist Jill Carroll was kidnapped in Iraq last month and her captors have threatened to kill her if their demands are not met by February 26th. Singer asks why the possibility of meeting the kidnappers demands is not discussed openly, especially when there is precedent for meeting such demands. He writes:
"Which of us would not seek to meet the kidnappers' demands if Carroll were our daughter? If one of President Bush's daughters were in a similar situation, do we believe he would not be thinking about whether to meet the demands? Indeed, wouldn't we think worse of him as a human being if he did not?
"Admittedly, the duties of a president may override the duties of a father. The leader of a nation sometimes has to stand firm, and he may even be required to sacrifice his children for the good of the nation. But of course that would be a last resort and should not be done unless the stakes are truly momentous.
"Are the stakes that momentous in this case? They don't seem to be. The kidnapper's demands, if indeed they are limited to the release of the five female prisoners being held by the military in Iraq, seem relatively modest, a small price to pay for saving the life of a young woman."
Jill Carroll Updates can be found at the Christian Science Monitor Site.
2 comments:
It would seem that dealing with, or even acknowledging these kind of demands would only make this tactic more attractive to terrorists.
Thanks Jayce. Peter Singer in his piece does acknowledge your position. But he argues that the rule against dealing with kidnappers is not absolute, and he uses the example of Israel (hardly a country that can be accused of being "soft on terror") exchanging prisoners for the release of their own soldiers held captive.
I think some support for Singer's position is the fact that even though the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq has refused to give in to insurgent demands to release any of the numerous people who have been kidnapped since 2003, the rate of kidnapping is _increasing_ in Iraq. That's certainly not an argument for negotiating with the kidnappers, but it does suggest that the current policy is not working either.
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