Secretary of State Antony Blinken ordered his Office of Palestinian Affairs to delete the statement as soon as journalists began calling. “Terror and violence solve nothing,” it read. It was the usual State Department pabulum. Most statements nowadays are empty and formulaic, as easily written by a computer algorithm as a diplomat.
The notion that terrorism never works is a nice sentiment. The problem is it is not true. Indeed, Blinken later telephoned his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan to discuss a ceasefire. Given how Fidan was the mastermind behind the Turkey-Hamas nexus, this was akin to asking the arsonist to lead firefighting efforts. Blinken’s gut reaction was to reward terror.
Frankly, Blinken is not alone.
President Jimmy Carter rewarded Iranian revolutionaries with the Algiers Accords, a humiliating agreement not only to release funds to the hostage-takers but also to promise to remain aloof from Iran’s internal revolutionary politics.
Ronald Reagan criticized Carter without mercy during his 1980 campaign, but once in office, he was little better. His decision to withdraw Marine peacekeepers from Beirut in the face of Hezbollah terrorism not only handed Iran a huge victory on the shores of the Mediterranean but also inspired al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.
President Bill Clinton normalized rewarding terror. Under Clinton, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, the front man for the Irish Republican Army terror group, became the foreign politician to visit the White House most frequently. Clinton not only rewarded Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat with normalization, but he also pumped billions of dollars into Arafat’s coffers, even as intelligence flowed in showing the Palestinian “former” terrorist’s corruption and insincerity. It was under Clinton that terrorists embraced the formula: Terror plus patience will equal political concession and cash beyond our cause’s wildest imagination.
And so it continued under President George W. Bush. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice greenlighted Palestinian elections but did nothing to precondition them on the decommissioning of militias and terrorist groups. The message she sent: Ballot boxes bring legitimacy, but terrorism works if unable to persuade voters. Bush may have launched a war on terror, but Rice opened direct talks with Iran, allowing that rogue regime to leverage terror into concession. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry simply took her opening and ran with it, adding billions of dollars in hostage ransoms and sanctions relief along the way, in effect making Iran’s decadeslong investment in terrorism and nuclear proliferation profitable.
If al Qaeda forced Bush to declare a war on terror, then it was Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden who ensured that rather than win the war, they would reward al Qaeda’s initiative. How else to explain not only the reempowering of the Taliban in Afghanistan but also the quiet release of billions of dollars to the radical group? Biden was not content to pay the Taliban, however. He reversed the Taylor Force Act, enabling Palestinian terrorists to utilize American assistance to profit from their acts, and even agreed to pour taxpayer funds into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip prior to this month’s bloodbath.
It is time to stop the rhetoric that “terrorism doesn’t solve anything.” Terrorism is a tactic and, across decades, a very effective one. That Palestinian terrorists, Iraqi insurgents, or Iranian hostage-takers can turn a $20,000 operation into a billion-dollar windfall should shame every member of Congress who, for partisan reasons, gives their man in the White House carte blanche to concede.
The only way to ensure that terrorism does not pay is to ensure that the pain and cost to every terrorist, be they leader, henchman, foreign financier, or cheerleader, will be far greater than they can imagine. Innocents will suffer as cancer is removed, but the alternative is to let the tumor grow and, with it, the chance of even greater calamity in the future.