President Obama on Wednesday announced a new US government policy for dealing with Americans who are kidnapped abroad, and as always he stressed compassion for the hostages and their families.

Compassion? Where’s Obama’s compassion for the kidnap victim, who’s exposed to further kidnapping, since snatching him clearly pays off? Where’s Obama’s compassion for other Americans, now at increased risk or kidnapping themselves, by ransom paying that is nothing more than aiding and abetting the criminals/terrorists masqueraded as “compassion?”

…a government-wide review of US hostage policy, which has drawn criticism for inconsistency and lack of coordination. “The families of hostages have told us—and they’ve told me directly—about their frequent frustrations in dealing with their own government: How different departments and agencies aren’t always coordinated,” Mr. Obama said[.]

Those departments also don’t inform very much, if at all, the victim’s families of the status of efforts to get the victim back. The right answer, though, is not to reward the kidnappers for their efforts but to create consistency and coordination—and to summarily fire those bureaucrats who fail at this—and to pass information freely and on demand to the victims’ families. Certainly, many efforts are and should remain secret, but in those events, swear the families to secrecy—they need to be inside the loop, not outside of it.