Jim Foley’s Legacy Helped Change Hostage Policy

Ten years ago Monday, my son, the journalist James Foley, was brutally murdered by ISIS in Syria.

On the day my son was killed I felt almost more rage against our government than I did against his killers. Along with so many other Americans kidnapped and taken hostage through recent years, it seemed to me that Jim was considered collateral damage by our political leaders. The government has claimed that it did all it could to bring Jim home, but I refused to accept what I saw as its inaction.

We were told by a member of the National Security Council that we might face federal prosecution if we tried to raise the ransom to pay for Jim’s freedom. I stood by in bewilderment as the governments of France, Spain and Italy successfully negotiated for the lives of their citizens while our men and women were abandoned.

I knew, even in the depths of my pain, that such terror should happen to no mother.

In recent weeks, President Biden has been rightly hailed for the prisoner exchange that brought home the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, the former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, the Russian American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva and the Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza. For the remainder of his term, President Biden has vowed that he will “not stop working until every American wrongfully detained or held hostage around the world is reunited with their family.”

That emphasis on bringing hostages home is not just Mr. Biden’s legacy — it’s also my son’s, as well as those who died alongside him. Jim’s experience showed that only negotiation can surely bring back hostages.

In the decade since losing Jim, I learned that properly directed grief enables hope and change. I have tried to carry the message of his life out into the world. Over time, politicians and the public began to hear it. Even his killer eventually heard it. It is a message that I believe is one that we all must continue to listen to: To be moral, we must have courage, and we must speak out about our loved ones captured and wrongfully imprisoned overseas.

Jim had gone to Afghanistan, Libya and Syria to report not only on the plight of the people there but also on the condition of our soldiers. He was captured and tortured, a symbol of all America’s perceived transgressions. But even though Jim was an American citizen, we received the message harshly from as high up as the Oval Office: The American government would not engage with terrorists. This cruel, stubborn and misinformed policy cost Jim his life.