negotiate with terrorists? or not?

I dunno about you, but I’ve lost count of how many times I’d visit a news website and see a grainy photo of a hostage in an orange jumpsuit knelt before her hooded captors (is it me or does the graininess of the photo give it more shock value or realism, similar to how amateur porn is more ‘believable’ than the kind from Van Nuys) . But in almost every article pertaining to the kidnapping, without fail, you’ll run into this hillbilly quote: “We do not negotiate with terrorists.”

You then start to wonder if the person talking tough would be saying that if he had a knife pressed against his jugular. Why is it that there are fewer female hostages than males? (I wonder what Dave Chapelle has to say about this…). But what’s perhaps more amusing is how tough talk like that relates to game theory. According to this article written by Alan Dershowitz that appeared in The Guardian some 3-4 years ago, giving in to terrorists’ demands begets more terrorism. He argues that the prisoner’s dilemma heuristic model is evident in many cases and because some nations have caved in to terrorists’ threats (apparently he’s not shy about calling them out) in exchange for its citizens’ security, while their neighbor’s lot gets torched, which culminated in the events of 9/11. While we can all appreciate Mr. Dershowitz’s take on the etiology of terrorism, I feel that this excerpt is too dogmatic in its assertions (from the reader’s perspective, it appears that he’s simply picking and choosing which events to use to corroborate his statements and not being entirely objective) and assumes that all situations ought to be viewed with the same lens. As with games of strategy, the players need to adjust to the situation and each other, chip counts, the degree of predictability, patterns, etc.

In the three years since the article’s publication, have these tactics worked in our favor or have they backfired? More discussions on this topic can be found in The Strategy of Conflict by Thomas Schelling (the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences). It’s collecting dust on my desk at work, but I’ll have to review the related chapters.

In my vain attempt to comprehend the situation in the Middle East and the terrorist threats, I should probably read up on the essays on Guerilla Warfare by Lenin, Mao, Che Guvara, etc. And why Bin Laden hasn’t been caught or identified yet is baffling. Must be more frustrating than waking up in the middle of the night and could’ve sworn was aiming straight but instead started spraying in three different directions for 36 seconds before your legs and feet tell you that perhaps you’ve missed the target and just about run out of ammo. And now you’ve gotta clean up the mess.

There is no worse feeling than that.

Of course, it depends on who you believe is really winning the ‘war on terror’. All I know is that the insurgents continue to pose a danger or else the war would’ve ended by now.

And also ask myself why civil disobedience or active nonviolence isn’t widely discussed as a means to curb terrorism? Hmm…