Simon Critchley considers the US and UK policy of refusing to pay ransom to terrorists, noting that “governments like the Spanish, the French, and the Italian … have simply found other, more clandestine and covert ways of making such payments.” He notes that “the next move these [latter] governments make is simply to deny that such payments have been made”:
All of this suggests a moral dilemma: Is it better to (a) remain morally consistent, refuse negotiation and ransom payment to an allegedly evil organization, but watch your citizens get beheaded? Or (b) sign up to a principled agreement not to negotiate with “terrorists,” but then negotiate nonetheless, pay a large amount of money to release the citizens of your country, and simply deny the fact publicly?
In this case, I would argue that (b) is the best and wisest course of action. Consider the following scenario. Imagine that when the Spanish, French, and other governments began to negotiate with ISIS, the responsible parties in the UK and US did so as well. Based on what we know of the European negotiations, it seems likely that the lives of Foley, Sotloff, Haines, and Henning could have been spared. Also, Peter Kassig could be back in US and not threatened with a very likely beheading, and the voluble John Cantlie could hopefully return quietly to life in the UK. This would have required paying some money, probably quite a lot of money. Some reports indicated that ISIS had asked for 100 million euros for James Foley, but wasn’t he worth that much? European soccer players are traded for such sums. In October, the Pentagon reported that it had spent $1.1 billion on military operations since the offensive against ISIS began last summer.
In this way, the horrific spectacle of videoed beheadings of Western captives could have been avoided—executions that led to principled proclamations of the “pure evil” of ISIS on the part of David Cameron and Barack Obama and contributed in significant part to the subsequent, wildly expensive, and very probably ineffective policy of air strikes on ISIS in Syria. Absent these beheadings, the strikes in Syria might have been averted or at least conducted in a more covert, less febrile, and hysterical atmosphere.
The Dish 