Freeing hostages the Jack Bauer way
August 16th, 2007Christianity Today’s Ted Olson cites an interesting Times of London story that reports on some of the plans the South Korean government has considered to free the South Korean hostages from the Taliban.
One of the plans involved kidnapping family members of the Taliban “as a way of applying pressure.”
Olsen denounces this idea.
“It’s hard to imagine, even if kidnapping innocents to secure the release of the aid workers had ‘worked,’ that the Christian aid workers would be very pleased,” Olsen writes. “It’s hard to imagine Paul writing to the Corinthians, ‘When persecuted, we persecute; when kidnapped, we kidnap…’”
Is Olsen right in his assessment? Is it possible for Christians to support such a tactic?
Not only do I think it would be wrong to condone such “eye for an eye” behavior, but do they truly think it would be effective? As extremists I don’t see them really caring if their families are kidnapped, it would probably only make matters worse and hasten further executions of the S. Korean hostages. Has it not sunken in yet that they play by a different set of guidelines?
I say send in the SK equivalent of Delta Force.
In my recent mission to Haiti I had to consider the danger of being kidnapped. My mission pastor & I joked that they would need to go ahead and kill us because there’s no ransom money back home to free us.
Affairs of state are not the same as dealing with personal insults (Sermon on the Mt.). If I were kidnapped, I would rather die but know that my government attempted rescue and eliminated the terrorists.
“One of the plans involved kidnapping family members of the Taliban “as a way of applying pressure.””
To me, this is an example of what happens when religion runs amok. Trade extremism for extremism; of you kidnap we kidnap, if you torture we torture, etc. The problem with this “solution” is that we forever cede the moral high ground. We wouldn’t ever be able to condemn kidnapping and torture without rightly being called hypocrites for we would be guilty of kidnapping ourselves.
Something tells me the SK equivalent of Delta either isn’t up to this type of task or they are nonexistant. My money’s on the latter (don’t tell FOTF).
I don’t think as Christians or Americans we should be accepting of such tactics. It’s the first steps toward the decline of a civilized society when such “eye for an eye” tactics are implored.
I do think it would be logical to detain and interogate anybody that may have (and can be proven to have) a link to the kidnappers.
Leland and misawa both refer to the same Biblical term in a very negative way:
Not only do I think it would be wrong to condone such “eye for an eye” behavior, but do they truly think it would be effective?
I don’t think as Christians or Americans we should be accepting of such tactics. It’s the first steps toward the decline of a civilized society when such “eye for an eye” tactics are implored.
I wonder what they think of Exodus 21:22-25. Is it wrong to condone this part of the Mosaic law? Is this command for proportional punishment within the criminal justice system of ancient Israel part of the decline of that ancient civilized society?
Lex talonis — the principle of proportional punishment, eye for an eye — is a just principle. Promising to fulfill Scripture, Christ didn’t overturn this principle: instead, I believe He simply prohibited the individual from abusing this principle by taking it from its rightful application of civil justice to justify personal vendettas.
And invoking 1 Corinthians 4:11-13 in this situation is just stupid.
“When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.”
If Ted Olson wants to argue that governments shouldn’t kidnap because it’s not compatible with the Pauline command to endure persecution, just what in the world prevents taking the next logical step and arguing that this passage prevents governments from arresting, trying and imprisoning theives and murderers?
The application of this passage and “turn the other cheek” to the duties of government inexorably leads to an anarchism where — at best — the state can do nothing more than write laws that it is powerless to enforce, laws that are in effect suggestions and requests.
All that said, I don’t think civilized societies should kidnap people that they know to be innocent civilians in response to such tactics from jihadists.
For one thing, it undermines the principle of not negotiating with kidnappers because we would expect our enemies to negotiate with us after we had kidnapped. Undermining the principle of non-negotiation encourages future kidnappings, which is dangerous because peaceful civilization offers a lot more targets than do terrorist cells, as Beslan demonstrated. It would encourage our enemies to kidnap in the hope of having their captured colleagues released.
And it begs the question, just what do we do if the thugs call our bluff and start hacking heads off? Are we going to respond in kind by beheading their family members and broadcasting the video? Or do imprison those family members for life? Either way we will look bad, either demonstrating that we are as monstrous or our enemies or flinching at their monstrous behavior. We can fight fire with fire in the use of military force and in the arena of ideas, but the principle of terrorism is to commit deliberate moral outrage. It’s not in our nature to win such a game, but it would be a mistake nonetheless to enter that game, because even if we win, we lose.
But that’s no excuse to invoke shoddy reasoning against this idea, either by attacking a perfectly just principle of lex talonis or by misapplying a New Testament epistle.
So how come it seems as if we agree, Bubba, yet I’m wrong?
At no point did I say eye for eye was unjust. I referred to it negatively b/c in the context of how it was referred to in Tim’s post (more so the Times story), it was being used negatively - a point with which (it appears) we agree on: …I don’t think civilized societies should kidnap people that they know to be innocent civilians in response to such tactics from jihadists.
You brought up the application of I Corinth - no where in my (or Leland’s) post did I/we invoke such a defense. Were you assuming that was my position? It most assuredly is not.
You imply that I’ve applied a biblical principal stupidly and have invoked shoddy reasoning - prove it.
Pretty interesting coming from Ted Olsen whose wife died in the plane that hit the Pentagon on 9/11.
Misawa, I referenced Ted Olson’s invocation of I Corinthians, which is implicit in the paragraph Tim excerpted and explicit in the Olson commentary to which Tim linked.
It is Ted Olson’s use of I Corinthians to explain why he opposes the kidnapping of terrorists’ families, that is what I was referencing as stupid.
I apologize if I misunderstood you, but you seemed to be criticial of the idea of kidnapping because it is an example of “‘eye for an eye’ tactics”. If you didn’t mean to criticize the principle of “eye for an eye” in general, I apologize for making an incorrect inference.
For what it’s worth, nowhere in the Times article OR Tim’s post do I see a reference to “eye for an eye”.
I referred to it negatively b/c in the context of how it was referred to in Tim’s post (more so the Times story), it was being used negatively…
Um, where?
Bub - when I saw you only mentioning myself and Leland, I assumed you were tossing me in with Olsen - I apologize for doing so.
I was not quoting eye for an eye from the article or Tim’s post - I was implying “eye for an eye” under the SK’s idea of kidnapping for kidnapping. Perhaps I should have said “gross-out-of-context-eye-for-an-eye?”
Either way, I am a supporter of the Biblical principle of eye for an eye.
Bubba, I like you. Your reasoning and expression are right on here. As for misawa, his context for the “eye” reference was Leland’s previous quote.
What is in question is not really an ‘eye for an eye’ in this case, but a ’tis for tat’ - retaliation. As Bubba indicated, a retaliatory kidnapping would be a horrible direction to take for numerous reasons.
Perhaps this can bring things back to an equilibrium in this thread:
Leland, we agree (Bubba, misawa, and I) with you. Except, we don’t think you should honor the SK kidnapping plan with the biblical expression “eye for an eye” - at least as it is properly understood. Proportional justice is a mark of a civilized culture - but not degrading retaliations as such kidnappings would be.
Well, thanks for pointing out my error. I stand corrected.
’tis for tat’
I always thought it was ‘tit for tat’. Am I wrong?
j razz
Unless I’ve missed it, I don’t think the most relevant passage to this has been cited yet, which would be Romans 13:3-4. We cannot confuse the role of the Church and the government. Both are institutions ordained by God but given different functions.
The government’s role is to restrain evil and, failing that to punish it, even up to the point of the death of the wrongdoer if need be.
Should the Korean government take steps to secure the release of these hostages, even if those steps may lead to violence against the perpetrators? Absolutely. Should they take violent action against the families of the perpetrators if they are not parties to the crime? Absolutely not.
The church should not be involved in the area reserved for government (and visa versa) but can be involved by praying and/or using their influence in other ways to end the crisis.
“Pretty interesting coming from Ted Olsen whose wife died in the plane that hit the Pentagon on 9/11.”
What plane?
Have you ever watched “Loose Change”? Definitely worth checking out. It’s online and free. I think Newman has seen it. Anyone else?
Zoner,
I’ve seen it. I’m not convinced about all of the “eye-witness” reports. It’s much easier to reconstruct things in your mind incorrectly, post-incident, than it is to remember accurately when confronted with extreme circumstances. But I do think that there’s probably some pretty serious defense systems in place at that location that aren’t general knowledge. This could account for some of the strange reports in that documentary.