The father of Kayla Jean Mueller has a bone to pick with the United States Government.
“We understand the policy about not paying ransom but on the other hand…we tried and we asked. But they put policy in front of American citizens’ lives,” Carl Mueller told NBC’s “Today” show.
Mueller was referring to the kidnapping and death of his daughter, Kayla, who began assisting Syrian refugees in Southern Turkey in December, 2012.
The United States has a policy of not paying ransom to terrorist groups in return for hostages.
Kayla Mueller
Although Turkey lies right on the border of Syria–where a brutal civil war has raged since March 15, 2011–Mueller insisted on putting herself at even greater risk.
In December, 2012, Mueller attended a two-day international conference in Aleppo, 70 miles inside Syria. She survived that trip without incident, and returned to Turkey.
But as the fighting intensified and casualties mounted, she wanted to return to Syria to collect stories for her blog. She begged her Syrian boyfriend to take her along during his trips there.
Her boyfriend relented in August, 2013, and she accompanied him on another trip to Aleppo during a 10-day break from her work. But as they were leaving, this time Mueller didn’t prove so lucky.
On August 4, 2013, as they drove to the bus station in Aleppo, gunmen ambushed them. Mueller’s boyfriend was beaten and released.
He was Syrian, so his life didn’t count for propaganda material. But Mueller was an American–and her captors were members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
According to Catherine Herridge, an American reporter, the White House learned the location of Mueller in May, 2014. But no decision was made on a rescue mission for seven weeks.
By that time, the hostages had been dispersed. On February 6, 2015, ISIS released a statement claiming that a female American hostage–Kayla Mueller–they had been holding was killed by one of a dozen Jordanian airstrike in Raqqa, Syria.
These airstrikes had been triggered by ISIS’ release of a February 3 video showing the barbaric “execution” of a captured Jordanian fighter pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kasaesbeh.
Al-Kasaesbeh, locked in a steel cage like an animal, could only watch stoically as an ISIS member ignited a trail of flammable liquid leading directly to him. The pilot stood upright throghout the ordeal until the flames at last consumed him.
ISIS burning of captured Jordanian fighter pilot Muath al-Kasaesbeh
So the Jordanians bombed a series of ISIS targets in Syria. And Kayla Mueller, who had thrust herself into a Syrian civil war, was apparently killed in one of those raids.
Which led to the interview with Kayla’s distraught parents.
“Any parents out there would understand that you want anything and everything done to bring your child home,” said Carl Mueller. His wife, Marsha, sitting next to him, naturally agreed.
Referring to the United States’ policy of refusing to pay ransom for hostages, Mueller said:
“And we tried. And we asked. But they put–they put policy in front of American citizens’ lives. And it didn’t get changed. So, that’s something they’re going to work on. I’m sure that’s in the works.”
Asked if his daughter hadn’t put herself in peril by jumping into the middle of a Syrian civil war, Mueller replied:
“Well, yeah, it was overenthusiastic youth and, of course, being naive. But who wasn’t, you know? How many mistakes have we all made in life that were naive and didn’t get caught at?
“Kayla was just in a place that was more dangerous than most. And she couldnt’ help herself. She had to go there and had to help.”
But did she have to go there?
On the September 28, 2014 edition of 60 Minutes, President Barack Obama spoke about his recent decision to commit American troops to fighting ISIS.
Steve Kroft: I think everybody applauds the efforts that you’ve made and the size of the coalition that has been assembled.
But most of them are contributing money or training or policing the borders, not getting particularly close to the contact. It looks like once again we are leading the operation. We are carrying…
President Obama: Steve, that’s always the case. That’s always the case. America leads. We are the indispensable nation. We have capacity no one else has. Our military is the best in the history of the world.
And when trouble comes up anywhere in the world, they don’t call Beijing. They don’t call Moscow. They call us. That’s the deal.
President Obama
Steve Kroft: I mean, it looks like we are doing 90 percent.
President Obama: Steve, there is not an as issue … when there’s a typhoon in the Philippines, take a look at who’s helping the Philippines deal with that situation. When there’s an earthquake in Haiti, take a look at who’s leading the charge making sure Haiti can rebuild. That’s how we roll. And that’s what makes this America.
President Obama is right: “When trouble comes up anywhere in the world, they don’t call Beijing. They don’t call Moscow. They call us.”
And, according to former CIA agent Michael Scheuer, that’s the problem: America can’t learn to mind its own business.




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TERRORISTS AS VICTIMS
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 7, 2015 at 12:02 amOn December 30, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced that Palestinians had joined the International Criminal Court to pursue war crimes charges against Israel.
“We want to complain. There’s aggression against us, against our land. The Security Council disappointed us,” Abbas said at a meeting of the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank.
Abbas has plenty to complain about. The Palestinian terrorist organization, Hamas, opened hostilities with Israel on July 7–and promptly lost the war.
In June, 2014, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered. Israeli authorities suspected the culprits were members of Hamas, the terrorist organization that’s long called for Israel’s destruction.
In a desperate search for the missing teens, Israeli forces killed 10 Palestinians, injured 130 and arrested 500 to 600 others.
Hamas, in turn, began launching rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip, which it has controlled since June, 2007. By July 7, 100 rockets had been fired at Israel.
Israeli planes retaliated by attacking 50 targets in Gaza.
On July 8, during a 24-hour period, Hamas fired more than 140 rockets into Israel from Gaza. Saboteurs also tried to infiltrate Israel from the sea, but were intercepted.
A Hamas rocket streaks toward Israel
That same day–July 8, 2014–Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, a full-scale military attack on Gaza.
Hamas then announced that it considered “all Israelis”–including women, children, the elderly and disabled–to be legitimate targets.
On July 8, Hamas–acting as though it were laying down peace terms to an already defeated Israel–issued the following demands:
Only then would Hamas be open to a ceasefire agreement. Egypt offered a cease-fire proposal. Israel quickly accepted it, temporarily stopping hostilities on July 15.
But Hamas claimed that it had not been consulted and rejected the agreement.
Palestinians continued to blithely launch hundreds of rockets at Israel–but went into ecstasies of grief before television cameras when one of their own was killed by Israeli return fire.
As a result, Israel has come under repeated verbal attacks by Hamas-sympathetic nations. The charge: Israel is being too effective at defending itself, killing more Palestinians than Hamas is able to kill Israelis.
Reuven Berko, a former soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) recently addressed this charge in a guest column in the online newsletter, the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT).
A major reason for so many civilian deaths among Palestinians, writes Berko, is that Hamas turns them into human shields by hiding its missiles in heavily-populated centers.
On July 17, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Far East (UNRWA) discovered approximately 20 rockets hidden in a vacant UN school in the Gaza Strip.
“UNRWA strongly condemns the group or groups responsible for placing the weapons in one of its installations,” said the agency in an announcement.
“This is a flagrant violation of the inviolability of its premises under international law.” UNRWA claimed that “this incident…is the first of its kind in Gaza.”
But Israel counters that this is just one of many proven instances of Hamas hiding its fighters and munitions among a heavily civilian population.
Click here: UNRWA Strongly Condemns Placement of Rockets in School | UNRWA
At the heart of Berko’s editorial is the subject of “proportionality.”
Writes Berko: “Israel is held to an impossible moral double standard. “Israelis, proportionality advocates seem to believe, should be killed by Hamas rockets instead of following Home Front Command instructions and running to shelters, to say nothing of Israel’s blatant unfairness in protecting its civilians with the Iron Dome aerial defense system….
“Anyone who demands that Israel agree to a life of terror governed by a continuous barrage of rockets and mortar shells on the heads of its women and children in the name of restraint and ‘proportionality’ would never agree to risk the safety of their own families in a similar situation.”
war against radical Islam if we can’t even name the enemy?”
Berko points out that during World War 11, the Allies didn’t hesitate to retaliate for the Nazi blitz of London. In February, 1945, British and American planes firebombed Dresden, killing about 25,000 people.
Nor did America feel guilty about dropping two atomic bombs on Japan, killing about 250,000 civilians.
Summing up his argument, Berko writes: “The ridiculous demand for proportionality contradicts every basic principle of warfare.“
According to American strategist Thomas Schelling, you have to strike your enemy hard enough to make it not worthwhile for him to continue…. “
In the Western world, killing someone in self-defense is considered justifiable homicide.”
Click here: Guest Column: The Double Standard of Proportionality: The Investigative Project on Terrorism
Berko could just as easily have ended his column with the words of Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, whose Union forces cut a swath of destruction across the South in his famous “March to the Sea.”
William Tecumseh Sherman
Wrote Sherman: “Those people made war on us, defied and dared us to come south to their country, where they boasted they would kill us and do all manner of horrible things.
“We accepted their challenge, and now for them to whine and complain of the natural and necessary results is beneath contempt.”
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