While the United States government will continue to maintain its policy of refusing to pay ransom for hostages held by terrorists, it is considering allowing family members to communicate with such kidnappers, and to raise money and pay ransom for their release, without being subjected to the threat of prosecution. That we are even considering such a thing is a sign of weakness.
The justification seems to be that it is cruel to threaten people with prosecution for doing something that will not cause any harm to others. According to ABC News, referring to those murdered by ISIS when ransom was not paid:
Experts say that threatening hostages' families with prosecution who already are suffering excruciating pain -- which eventually was subsumed by grief when their loved ones were murdered by ISIS -- was not only reprehensible, but sticking to a cookie-cutter policy of outlawing ransom negotiations or payments also mistakenly restricted options rather than risked encouraging more kidnappings.
The idea here is that if families pay ransom, it will not lead to more kidnappings, and so it is wrong to threaten them with prosecution, which only adds to their suffering. One such expert referred to in the above quotation is Chris Voss, a retired FBI hostage negotiator, who said of the idea of letting families pay ransom, “I don’t think this is going to lead to more kidnappings at all.”
But if Voss is correct, then it follows that having the government pay ransom will not lead to more kidnappings either. If the terrorists find that they can get money by kidnapping Americans, it will make no difference to them whether the money comes from individual citizens or the government. Either the payment of ransom will lead to more kidnappings or it will not, and whether the funds received come from private or public hands will not change the calculations of the kidnappers. Therefore, if the government changes its policy, allowing families to pay ransom on the grounds that it will not lead to more kidnappings, as Voss claims, while still maintaining the policy of refusing to pay ransom on the grounds that doing so will lead to more kidnappings, then the government’s policy will be based on a contradiction.
The reason for that contradiction will be the undue influence of emotion. The present policy on the part of our government of refusing to pay ransom and refusing to let families pay ransom is the right one. That the families do not think so is understandable, but irrelevant. It is only natural that the families of hostages should want the government to let them pay ransom if they want to, but that is no reason for us to give in to such sentimentality. When a man is guilty of some horrible murder, it will sometimes happen that his mother will plead in his behalf, saying that he was such a sweet child or that he is basically a good man. No matter how foolish her prattle, we don’t hold it against her, for we understand how hard it must be for a mother to see her son being sent to prison. But neither do we change the law and allow men with crying mothers to go free.
While it may seem cruel to threaten families with prosecution for paying ransom, the law forbidding such payments may actually be doing them a favor, for it protects the family from the powerful emotions impelling them to do all they can to gain the release of their loved one. Without this law, families are likely to bankrupt themselves, dooming them to financial hardship for the rest of their lives. The law allows them not to feel guilty about not paying the ransom, because the government plays the heavy.
Unfortunately, the policy probably will be changed to allow families to pay ransom. If the beheadings of few Americans by ISIS was enough to change this country from one that was sick of war to one that is ready to send combat troops back to Iraq, it is safe to conclude that we as a nation allow feelings of pity to prevail over principles informed by a rational consideration of what is best in the long run.