{"id":6453,"date":"2014-09-14T00:25:21","date_gmt":"2014-09-14T00:25:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=6453"},"modified":"2014-09-14T00:25:21","modified_gmt":"2014-09-14T00:25:21","slug":"did-we-abandon-an-isil-captive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6453","title":{"rendered":"Did we abandon an ISIL captive?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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My heart breaks for Diane Foley, whose son James was beheaded by Islamist terrorists.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, I can understand her bitterness that the U.S. government perhaps<\/em> could have done more to save her son’s life.<\/p>\n

Perhaps.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2014\/09\/12\/us\/james-foley-mother-us-response\/index.html?hpt=hp_t1<\/p>\n

Is it fair, though, so soon after this terrible tragedy to suggest the government failed to do all it could do to secure the journalist’s release?<\/p>\n

It’s been revealed that in July the U.S. sent a Special Forces team into Syria to rescue Foley. It failed. The team arrived at where it thought Foley was being held but discovered only an empty building.<\/p>\n

Diane Foley now alleges that national security officials threatened her with prosecution if she continued to raise money to pay a ransom for her son. Indeed, U.S. law now prohibits the government from negotiating with terrorists. It’s unclear — to me at least — just how Ms. Foley intended to pay the money if she was able to raise the amount the terrorists demanded.<\/p>\n

Secretary of State John Kerry — who’s in Turkey seeking to build an international coalition to fight ISIL — adamantly denies any personal knowledge of a prosecution threat.\u00a0Kerry told reporters: “I can tell you that I am totally unaware and would not condone anybody that I know of within the State Department making such statements.”<\/p>\n

Quite clearly nothing can bring James Foley back. As for U.S. law prohibiting negotiating with terrorists, it needs to stay on the books.<\/p>\n

A mother’s grief is overwhelming. A nation still mourns her son’s gruesome death. But let’s not overlay that\u00a0grief with an understanding of what the government did — or couldn’t do under the law — to secure her son’s freedom.<\/p>\n

Let’s concentrate instead on finding the murderers and administering battlefield “justice,” which is what the president and secretary of state already have vowed to do.<\/p>\n\n

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My heart breaks for Diane Foley, whose son James was beheaded by Islamist terrorists. Accordingly, I can understand her bitterness that the U.S. government perhaps could have done more to save her son’s life. Perhaps. http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2014\/09\/12\/us\/james-foley-mother-us-response\/index.html?hpt=hp_t1 Is it fair, though, so soon after this terrible tragedy to suggest the government failed to do all it … Continue reading Did we abandon an ISIL captive?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13,14],"tags":[1043,1375,2347,2403,2539,3215,4398],"class_list":["post-6453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-cnn","tag-diane-foley","tag-isil","tag-james-foley","tag-john-kerry","tag-national-security-council","tag-state-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}