President Obama stated Sunday that the United States is working tirelessly to free an unnamed American woman who is being held as a captive of ISIS. According to the president, this woman is the last remaining American being held by the Islamic State.
The news of America’s doubled efforts to save this woman comes after the tragic story of Peter Kassig, an Indiana resident who was beheaded by ISIS in November 2014 while doing humanitarian work through Special Emergency Response and Assistance.
Despite this woman’s position in one of the biggest religious wars in recent history, her family, as well as U.S. officials, have decided to keep her identity a secret. And I couldn’t agree with that ?decision more.
While I absolutely want this woman to come home safely, and despite the fact that I know naming someone humanizes them and makes them more real, I hate the idea of putting a name and a face to this woman’s tragic story.
This is not because I don’t want to imagine anyone going through such a horrific event. No, I just don’t want the terrorists to win.
Ever since 9/11, America has been terrified of letting the terrorists win. If we call french fries by their real name rather than Freedom Fries, the terrorists win. If we don’t support our troops, the terrorists win. If we go to the bathroom without washing our hands, the terrorists win.
But do you know how terrorists actually win? By ?terrorizing people.
Knowing the American media like I do, the minute this woman is named, news outlets will spend the next week with her image plastered on every single television screen in America. There will be reporters camping outside her family’s home and news anchors will spend every waking moment discussing the possibility of her death.
And that is exactly what ISIS wants. They want Americans to constantly be thinking about the woman in their custody and how any minute could be her last. They want us to relate with her, to connect with her, so that we might see ourselves in her situation.
They want us to be afraid. I’m not saying we shouldn’t empathize with this woman or that we shouldn’t be trying everything we can to try to get her back. To the contrary, I actually think doing both of these things would destroy ISIS’s plans. That being said, we need to keep our heads above this ocean of fear ISIS wants us to drown in.
Fear solves nothing. Fear caused mosques to be defaced and Muslims to be assaulted in the aftermath of 9/11. Fear makes us weak, not only as a world power, but also as a community.
kevsjack@umail.iu.edu
