Quote:
Originally Posted by SkylarCruzWantsYou
So I guess we should let our citizens just rot in jail? I was just saying do you think you could come up with any safe alternatives to get American prisoners back home without jeopardizing lives or succumbing to the Egyptian government.
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Basically, there aren't any.
There's this fundamental choice, Sky, known as "the carrot and the stick". Egypt, or at least some Egyptians, right now believes they can hold out for a really big pile of carrots, with no risk of receiving the stick. If they're right, then every other pissant tinpot scumbag on the planet will go for his own personal pile of carrots.
The details of this approach were summarized quite nicely by Rudyard Kipling, in "Dane-Geld: AD 980-1016".
http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_danegeld.htm
I think you will agree that we don't want that.
Israel has understood this for decades. They have a no-exceptions policy of not negotiating with terrorists, no matter who urges them to do so, no matter how high the stakes, because the out-year stakes are a lot higher.
The alternative is the stick, military force, or, more precisely, a credible threat thereof. Jimmy Carter tried the carrot with Iran. It failed. Carter also attempted to snatch the hostages back, but something went horribly wrong. I've heard a couple of variations on the story; I'm quite certain I haven't heard anything that even remotely resembles the full story on what happened at Desert Base One. (One of Beckwith's classmates, a former coworker of mine, absolutely refuses to accept the official version, saying "Chargin' Charlie" never went off and thought about ANYTHING: he made his decisions instantly and went with them.) When Reagan was elected, Iran figured out very quickly that he was made of a very different metal than Carter was, and the hostages were on their way home before the inauguration.
I will make, here, a flat prediction. Obama will not use the stick. Period.
I will add an opinion. Obama cannot credibly threaten to use the stick. Everyone on the planet knows he doesn't have the stomach for it.
And there's the rub. We can't afford the carrots, and Obama won't use the stick.
I can think of one strategy that might work. Explain to Egypt that, for every day that they continue to hold any of our people, our aid to Egypt will be reduced by 1%. PERMANENTLY. Then make it stick, and start turning the screw. The appropriate way to deliver that message is by handing it to their chief ambassador to the United States, and then declaring him persona non grata and ordering him to leave the US within 72 hours. Oh, and by the way, the clock starts when the letter is handed to the ambassador, not when he hands it over to the rulers of Egypt, so he should probably stop by his embassy's radio room before he waddles his Egyptian butt to the airport.
http://nation.foxnews.com/libya-consulate-attack/2012/09/19/intelligence-sources-al-qaeda-ex-gitmo-detainee-involved-consulate-attack
