The Gentle Art of Negotiating with Terrorists
Western liberals believe that peace will be achieved when all the wars end, but peace in the Muslim world is not a permanent state; rather it is a temporary truce in an endless war
The first rule of negotiating with Islamic terrorists is don’t. The second rule is if you do it, do it with heavy artillery.
Islamic terrorists don’t negotiate. They make demands in hopes of securing concessions without actually giving up anything. Only the most dedicated historian could find an example of a negotiation process during which the Islamic terrorists made an actual concession, followed through on it, and did not later take it back or turn right around and go back to terrorism.
The most prominent counterexamples are the three decades of negotiations between Israel and Islamic terrorist groups, which initially won a round of Nobel Peace Prizes and then degenerated into an endless war during which the terrorists took back every concession they ever made, did not follow through on any of them, and used Israeli concessions to become a much worse threat.
Negotiating with the Taliban, Hezbollah and Iran all had the same end result.
Offering to negotiate with Islamic terrorists is a statement of weakness. Jihadists only offer to negotiate out of fear, weakness or to entrap us, and they assume we do the same thing. Nothing would ever convince them that we genuinely want to live in peace with them, or that we prefer alternatives to violence. So any time we offer to negotiate, they see it as weakness or a trick.
If our diplomats ever understood this cultural reality, they would stop being baffled when the negotiations fall apart. And after generations of the same thing, they refuse to learn.
Terrorists start negotiations with maximalist demands to probe for weakness, and then switch between false promises and threats. If any of our diplomats had bought a rug at a good price in the Middle East or a used car at a good price in Chicago, they would respond by walking out. Instead, they try to find a way to meet their demands. And then the terrorists have them.
The terrorists become the ones to walk out. They throw Bobby Fischer-style tantrums over every minor detail. They invent a constant stream of new grievances to be outraged by. What are typical tactics for small children, sociopaths and Egyptian merchants utterly baffle our best and brightest, who can’t figure out how to cope with opponents who don’t play by UN rules.
See Also:
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