HOW SOMALI PIRATES COULD TAKE OBAMA HOSTAGE
by Dominic Tierney
In April 2009, the story of Richard Phillips'
capture by Somali pirates, and his dramatic rescue by Navy Seals, became
one of the major news stories. The incarceration of Americans by foreign
actors, as hostages and prisoners of war, has incredible emotional and
political power, and often garners profound media scrutiny.
This intense focus on the fate of captive
Americans is a syndrome with very dangerous effects, producing exaggerated
attention on the fate of a handful of men and women, encouraging
adversaries to detain more Americans, and promoting risky rescue
operations, which brought down one president, Jimmy Carter, and helped
turn another, Ronald Reagan, into a lame duck. It is a dynamic with the
potential to wreck Obama's administration.
Throughout U.S. history, the fate of
Americans imprisoned abroad has been a highly emotional and politically
explosive issue. During the 1700s, thousands of Americans joined citizen
group to raise money to ransom captives held by the Barbary pirates of
North Africa, and lobby for more government action. Accounts of detention
and escape, known as "captivity narratives," often became bestsellers. The
treatment of Union POWs in the Confederate prison at Andersonville during
the Civil War is a controversial question to this day. During World War
II, the Japanese brutality toward U.S. prisoners was central to the
demonization of Japan.
After 1945, the issue of captive Americans
became increasingly politically charged. The families of American
prisoners of war and missing in action (POW/MIA) in Vietnam began an
unprecedented public campaign to aid the captured men, selling five
million POW/MIA bracelets inscribed with the name of a missing or captured
soldier. Even after the fighting ended, allegations continued into the
1990s that Americans were still being held in Vietnam. Apart from the
Stars and Stripes, the only flag that has flown from the White House is
the black and white POW/MIA flag.
Shortly after the fall of Saigon in 1975,
Khmer Rouge forces in Cambodia captured a U.S. merchant vessel, the
Mayaguez, and its crew. The Mayaguez Crisis garnered intense national
attention, and when the crew was released in the wake of a U.S. Marine
assault, the crisis was seen as one of the major triumphs of Gerald Ford's
presidency.
Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979,
radicals seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage,
of whom 52 entered long-term captivity. The U.S. media covered the Iranian
hostage crisis in astounding detail. Ted Koppel's Nightline started off as
a show devoted to the crisis, with every episode beginning "Day 1 of the
Hostage Crisis_" all the way to "Day 444_" when the last hostage was
released on January 20, 1981. During the 1980s, national attention was
once again focused intensely on the fate of American hostages, this time
in Lebanon. Around 100 foreigners were kidnapped in the decade after 1982,
including 25 Americans.
When Michael Durant was captured in the Black
Hawk Down battle in Somalia in October 1993, his image plastered the cover
of Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report, and he was the lead
story on all the major networks. More recently, in 2003, the account of
private Jessica Lynch's capture and subsequent rescue in Iraq became a
national sensation, and her autobiography was a bestseller.
Not every country feels this way about
captured nationals. In World War II, the Soviet regime depicted Russians
captured by the Germans as traitors, not heroes. During the Vietnam War,
while Washington obsessed about ensuring that no man was left behind, the
North Vietnamese paid little attention to the fate of their captured men
and seemed to resent having to repatriate their forces at the end of the
fighting.
Why do Americans care so deeply when their
fellow nationals are taken prisoner? It comes down to three dynamics.
First, the United States is a profoundly idealistic society, and Americans
tend to idealize captive nationals as the epitome of a true American. POWs
and hostages have lost what people cherish most, their freedom, often in
service to their country. Jimmy Carter saw the Iranian hostage crisis as
being bound up with what it was to be an American: "If I should do
anything to lessen the importance paid by us to the hostages' lives and
safety and freedom, it would obviously be a reflection on our own Nation's
principles."
Second, the resonance of imprisoned Americans
is exacerbated by feelings of vengeance directed against the captors. The
desire for revenge based on moral outrage is an extremely powerful
motivator for action. Compared to other advanced democracies, Americans
are unusually supportive of retribution against offenders, indicated by
the unusually high rates of incarceration and use of the death penalty,
which may result from the prevalence of Protestant fundamentalism and
evangelicalism, and the southern "culture of honor."
This retributive mindset means that Americans
perceive captors who mistreat POWs and hostages as evildoers, deserving
massive retaliation. In 1945, there was an unmistakable sense of payback
as American bombers struck Japanese cities. President Truman said he had
used the atomic bomb "against those who have starved and beaten and
executed American prisoners of war."
Third, U.S. power and geopolitical standing
promote the salience of the POW-hostage issue. America's material strength
makes the continued detention of its nationals by foreign adversaries less
acceptable. The United States has the capacity to employ decisive force,
including rescue missions and retaliation. This produces both a temptation
on the part of presidents to use this power and an expectation by the
public and media of action and resolution.
Furthermore, as individual men and women, the
captives represent a moderately important foreign policy issue, but as a
symbol of the nation's credibility and resolve on the international stage,
their fate can be perceived as enormously consequential. The United States
probably worries about its reputation more than any other country because
of its nuclear deterrent, global commitments, and unsurpassed number of
allies. Once the connection is drawn between the prisoners' plight and the
United States being held hostage and humiliated, the handling of the
crisis is often viewed as having critical reputational implications. James
Baker wrote that "Jimmy Carter's inability to secure the release of the
American diplomats held hostage by Iran for 444 days had become a metaphor
for a paralyzed presidency."
These idealistic, retributive, and
reputational strands all combined in 2009 when Somali pirates captured
Richard Phillips. The captain was widely seen as an idealized American,
lauded by President Obama as a hero for surrendering himself to the
pirates to enable his crewmates to go free. Meanwhile, the pirates were
vilified as the epitome of evil: their death at the hands of Navy Seal
snipers was considered a just punishment. The crisis also invoked critical
reputational implications. The Washington Post reported that while the
failure to free the hostages in Iran "was a permanent blemish on Carter's
reputation," the dramatic liberation of Phillips "may help to quell
criticism leveled at Obama that he came to office as a Democratic antiwar
candidate who could prove unwilling or unable to harness military might
when necessary."
In many respects, the American concern for
captive nationals is profoundly moral. Americans care about their fellow
citizens when they are at their most vulnerable. But our intense
fascination with POWs and hostages can nevertheless prove dangerous for
American interests and values.
Presidents can obsess over the fate of
captives to the exclusion of other important issues. Jimmy Carter was
personally consumed by the Iranian hostage crisis. In his memoirs, Carter
wrote about his "overwhelming" feelings, seeing the hostages as "part of
my own family." The loss of a sense of perspective was illustrated when
Carter compared the fate of the fifty men in Iran with the American Civil
War, which cost the lives of 600,000 Americans and almost destroyed the
United States: "At the height of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln
said, 'I have but one task, and that is to save the Union.' Now I must
devote my concerted efforts to resolving the Iranian crisis." Carter
himself became a hostage to the crisis. The incredible amount of time and
energy spent by the president and his top officials on the captives was
time they were not spending on substantively more pressing issues,
including economic problems and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, also
became preoccupied by the fate of American hostages--in this case seven
Americans captured in Lebanon in 1984-1985. Reagan commented, "I spent
many, many hours late at night wondering how we could rescue the hostages,
trying to sleep while images of those lonely Americans rolled past in my
mind... As president, as far as I was concerned, I had the duty to get
those Americans home."
Reagan's chief of staff recalled, "All of a
sudden he's envisioning himself as a captive alone in a dank, damp prison,
and where's the president of the United States? _ Ronald Reagan eats his
heart out over this. It worries him. It's with him." Oliver North, a
staffer at the National Security Council, felt that Reagan "was obsessed
by the hostages," who were "driving the President nuts."
The fixation on the fate of American captives
increases the attraction of risky rescue operations. Americans are willing
to pay a high price to free prisoners and to punish those responsible for
their detention. In 2002, 77 percent of Americans approved of using force
to "liberate hostages," and this was one of the most popular scenarios for
the employment of military power.
Americans do not always appreciate the long
odds against the success of a mission to liberate prisoners. It may be
impossible for the United States--or any other country--to locate and free
a captive held in a cellar somewhere in Mogadishu or Tehran. Most
Americans taken hostage abroad are not forcibly freed--they are ransomed,
either by employers or families. Jessica Lynch was the first U.S. prisoner
of war to be successfully rescued from the enemy since World War II.
There are certainly political benefits for a
president who is viewed as freeing captives. The resolution of the
Mayaguez Crisis in 1975 was widely seen as the greatest success of the
Ford administration because the sailors were released at the same time
that the president sent a force of Marines into Cambodia to locate the
men. But it is not clear that the military operation had any effect on the
decision to free the men, who were independently released from a location
miles away from where the Marines had erroneously landed.
In truth, the Mayaguez rescue mission was a
complete debacle, with more U.S. troops dying than there were hostages in
captivity. Three American soldiers were left behind in Cambodia, captured
and executed. But all of this was unknown or forgotten as Ford basked in
the glory of "getting the boys home," and his approval ratings jumped 11
points.
Five years later, Carter was influenced by
the "success" of Ford when he launched his own rescue mission in Iran.
Carter remarked in an interview in March 1980, "I have a very real
political awareness that at least on a transient basis, the more drastic
action taken by the President, the more popular he is. When President Ford
expended 40 American lives on the Mayaguez to save that many people who
had already been released, it was looked upon as a heroic action, and his
status as a bold and wise leader rose greatly. That is always a
temptation."
By April 1980, Carter determined that
negotiations with the Iranians would take too long and chose instead the
desperate gamble of a military operation. Carter's approval ratings had
sunk to 39 percent, and the White House recognized that the public wanted
the president to "do something" retaliatory. Operation Eagle Claw,
launched in April 1980, collapsed at the first hurdle, when a U.S.
helicopter crashed into a refueling plane and eight Americans died.
The failed operation contributed to an image
of administration incapacity that proved fatal to the president's
reelection prospects. It is perfectly plausible that if the rescue mission
had been perceived as a success, Carter would have won reelection.
Whatever the merits of Carter and Reagan, this is not an appropriate
method for determining the leader of the free world.
Reagan also became committed to securing the
release of the seven American hostages taken in Lebanon, almost regardless
of the cost. The president told the sister of one of the hostages: "I
don't care what anyone else says_ I'm going to bring those men home."
The White House was drawn into a Faustian
pact with Iran, in which weapons were traded in return for assistance in
gaining the release of the hostages. Secretary of State George Shultz and
Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger both opposed arms sales to Iran
because the policy was of dubious legality, strengthened Iran, damaged
America's international reputation, undermined the policy of not
bargaining with terrorists, and was domestically risky. Reagan recognized
all of these costs, but thought that freeing the men was worth it.
Between August 1985 and November 1986, the
United States traded over 2,000 TOW missiles, 18 HAWK missiles, various
spare parts, and intelligence in return for the release of three American
hostages. But during the same period, three more Americans were taken
hostage in Lebanon, producing an absurd revolving door of capture and
release, in which the only beneficiary was America's sworn enemy--Iran.
Despite the disastrous international and
domestic consequences of the Iran-Contra scandal, Reagan never regretted
the arms-for-hostages policy because, in his eyes, it managed to free
three of the men. Reagan said that his only crime was caring too much
about the captives.
The attention that Americans give to the
hostage-POW issue may have another perverse effect. Consistent with the
laws of supply and demand, the more that Americans focus on the fate of
hostages or POWs, the more that the adversary will see the captives as an
asset that should not be given up lightly. The North Vietnamese
disinterest in the welfare of its own captive soldiers may have been
callous, but its effect was to reduce U.S. leverage over Hanoi.
The notion that an American president cannot
permit hostages or POWs to remain in captivity without suffering a
significant political penalty is exceptionally dangerous-- gravely
injuring two presidencies in succession. Given the possibility that Somali
pirates, foreign insurgents, or a hostile government will detain more
Americans in the future, what can the Obama administration do to diminish
the risks?
First, and most importantly, the president
should publicly downplay as much as possible the status of detained
Americans. The issue is like dynamite: potentially explosive but requiring
a spark to detonate politically--which is usually provided by media
coverage. Officials should pay minimal public attention to the issue,
while employing quiet diplomacy behind the scenes to free the men and
women concerned.
For example, in February 1980, several
Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Diego Asencio, were taken hostage at
the Dominican Embassy in Columbia. The administration avoided making any
public statements on the issue, and it was not widely covered. Asencio was
freed two months later.
Second, presidents should avoid becoming
emotionally attached to the fate of the captives. In particular, they
should not meet the families of the hostages. Once Carter and Reagan
prayed with, and spoke to, the detainees' families, they felt a personal
responsibility to free the captives, which skewed their assessment of U.S.
national interests.
Third, when Americans are taken prisoner,
presidents should avoid pressing the idealistic, retributive, or
reputational buttons in the American psyche. Highlighting these themes can
whip up support at the start of a crisis, but narrow a president's options
as events play out. Officials should take great care in describing the
hostages as heroes and idealized Americans, the captors as evildoers who
must be physically punished, and the crisis as a test of the nation's
resolve and virility. Instead, presidents should diminish expectations
about the utility of American power, and the potential for rescue.
Fourth, we must all learn to tolerate the
long-term captivity of Americans abroad, just as we tolerate many other
evils in international politics, which cannot be quickly removed without
enormous cost to our interests and values. Otherwise, when a Somali pirate
detains an American sailor and holds him captive in Mogadishu, Obama may
find that his administration is also being held hostage.
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