Prisoner swap: three card monte, redux.
Reader comment on item: Hezbollah's Victory, Israel's Decline

Submitted by Dov Sussman, Esq. (United States), Feb 3, 2004 at 13:06

"Never leave your dead or wounded on the field of battle."

This admonishment is axiomatic for anyone familiar with the code of conduct under which soldiers live and serve. The Hizbollah prisoner swap, although well intended on the part of the State of Israel, is short sighted and extremely dangerous. The Hizbollah terrorists will be back and will, almost certainly, murder more Israeli citizens. Israel gains nothing, loses deterrent credibility and has now established a public record of negotiating with terrorists.

The terrorists now know the efficacy of kidnapping Israelis. Indeed, they have publically declared open season on Israelis, because a kidnapped Israeli is the medium of exchange to be used to secue the return of incarcerated terrorists.

The cold, hard and immutable truth is not palatible to PM Sharon and those who have lived by the Code of bringing your people back. It is necessary for the State of Israel, and any other nation threatened by terrorists, to articulate rules of engagement governing terrorist kidnappings. Henceforth any and all kidnapped victims are to be listed as KIA, not MIA. There is no negotiation. The appropriate response to terrorist kidnappings is in the form of a highly disproportionate military reckoning.

As General Sherman once remarked, "War is hell." Perhaps the generous administration of a copious hellish response to terrorist organizations like Hizbollah and others, is the precise curative tonic required. At the very least it will not provide the terrorists with the encouragement that this most recent "prisoner swap" has undoubtedly awarded them.

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