A recent online discussion on a wholly different subject went kinda sideways and ended up in the topic area of “should we threaten to nuke the ‘holy city’ of Such-and-Such world religion because a whole lot of the adherents of said religion are backwards murderous psychopaths driven to that by their crappy Surt-worshipping death cult of a religion.”

One side of the argument holds that threatening to nuke that city would be not only evil but counter-productive. We’d cheese off the rest of the Surt worshippers, the ones who today are merely “moderate” in their religious beliefs. There is validity in this point of view.

But on the other hand… there was this example from the mid 1980’s. Any Americans my age and older will no doubt remember the national shame of fellow Americans kidnapped by backwards savages in Lebanon and held for a *really* long time. What is less well remembered is that the Soviets *also* had some of their people kidnapped in the region. But unlike the Americans, the Soviet kidnappings were few and brief. And it wasn’t because the Soviets were nice to the kidnappers:

Hostages? No Problem Soviets Offer ‘How-to’ Lesson In Kidnapping

This piece, originally published in the January 15, 1986, issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer, tells of four Soviet embassy staffers in Beirut who were kidnapped in September, 1985. Demands were made that the Soviets pressure pro-Syrian forces to stop shelling pro-Iranian forces in northern Lebanon. When there was no forward progress on that, two days after the kidnapping one of the Soviet staffers was shot in the head and left in a trash dump.

Within a month, the other three kidnapped staffers were released unharmed, and no further Soviets were kidnapped. So what did the Soviets do different from the Americans?

Well, first off the KGB was unleashed. As goes the story, the KGB promptly determined that Hezbollah was responsible and located a nearby leader of that fun organization. And then located a close relative of the Hezbollah leader. And then the KGB kidnapped the relative. And castrated him, sending the severed junk to the Hezbollah leader, followed by shooting the relative through the noggin and sending the body along with the message that the KGB knew where more relatives were to be found.

Now, this sort of action is *massively* illegal. But the point is, it apparently worked.

There may be a lesson there.