While President Joe Biden secured the release of 10 hostages in Venezuela on Dec. 20, American hostages are being held in other areas of the world. In addition to Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan being held in Russia, eight American hostages are still believed to be held captive in Gaza. Hostage crises like these have prompted the State Department to appoint a Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs to bolster efforts to bring those held captive home.

Straight Arrow News contributor Ben Weingarten argues that it is America’s — and specifically Biden’s — weak response to attacks by Iran and its proxies that have created an environment conducive to the taking of American hostages in the first place.

Appeasement begets aggression. That’s a cruel lesson that has a way of blowing up in our face, literally, again and again. If the sophisticates in Washington, D.C. refuse to learn it, then Americans are doomed to suffer the consequences.

The Biden administration has made appeasing America’s enemies the linchpin of its national security and foreign policy, rather than endeavoring to make America the world’s dominant economic and military power, and applying overwhelming force, in limited situations, as a deterrent to our enemies.