COMMENTARY BY THOMAS E. RICKS
The U.S. Shouldn’t Ransom Journalists
If insurgents, extremists and criminals knew that kidnapping American reporters is not lucrative, that reduces the incentive to grab one. There still would be those who would kill Americans just to make a political point, but that would be a much smaller group. In the short run, the anti-ransom policy may have made life more dangerous for individual reporters, but in the long run, it makes them and other Americans in the Middle East somewhat safer.
