Posted by
JTB on Monday, August 06, 2007 11:42:37 AM
No one ever ended a fight with a bully or gang member by being
subservient--all that does is create an incentive for that bully and
others to impose their will. And the payment never stops or gets smaller. It's just human nature...
Rudyard Kipling's poem Danegeld is spot-on here:
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
- For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
- You will find it better policy to say: --
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
- No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
- And the nation that pays it is lost!"
South
Korea's response should have been to offer the Afghan government an
additional company of soldiers for each Korean Hostage plus an
additional battalion for each hostage killed. With the additional 3-5000 Korean troops on the way, the Taliban would have wisely released the hostages, unharmed, already...
Instead, the Korean Government has chosen to show the white feather. It is a sad day, indeed. And since the Korean government has chosen to remove any value from the hostages being alive, the Taliban will likely just kill them all to prove they were serious.