If Boko Haram Ignores Social Media Pressure, Then What?

Over at his
Telegraph blog Dan Hodges asks what we’re going
to do if Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist organization that
recently kidnapped over 200 girls, doesn’t succumb to the demands
of those posting the #bringbackourgirls hashtag.

Boko Haram recently released footage of some
of 136 of the kidnapped girls. In the footage the girls repeatedly
recite the first verse of the Koran, and Boko Haram’s leader says
he might consider swapping some of the girls for imprisoned
militants.

As Hodges notes, the heart-wrenching situation, and the
reactions to it have caught the attention of First Lady Michelle
Obama as well as British Prime Minister David Cameron. But, Hodges
asks, “What are we going to do about it?”

Hodges says that he is ok with “some big, rough men, with very
big guns to say to Boko Haram: ‘We’ve come to take our girls back.
And if you try to stop us, it’s the last thing you’ll ever do.'”
However, Hodges goes on to note that this approach could be a
problem: What are we supposed to do if Boko Haram carry out another
mass kidnapping, or a similar horror is carried out in Syria or
Ukraine?

More from Hodges:

Do we want to be the world’s policeman, or do we not? If we
don’t, then fine. But let’s take down the signs, and the hashtags,
because all we’re doing is communicating our own impotence.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that the social media campaign related
to the recent Boko Haram kidnapping is expressing outrage over what
is a comparatively minor atrocity by the group’s standards. Boko
Haram has not only kidnapped girls, it is responsible for thousands
of deaths. Indeed, only a few weeks after the kidnapping the group
killed
hundreds of people near Nigeria’s border with Cameroon.

Thankfully, Secretary of Defense 
Chuck Hagel said yesterday that the U.S. did not intend “at
this point” to send ground troops to Nigeria to help in the search
for the missing girls. However, U.S. military advisers are in
Nigeria as part of an international search effort.

Remember, the awful kidnapping is not a threat to U.S. national
security. As Reason‘s Nick Gillespie noted over at

Time:

The goal of our foreign policy, and especially interventions
involving soldiers, should always be tightly tied to protecting
American lives, interests and property.

As horrific as Boko Haram’s kidnapping of the school girls is,
it in no way poses a threat to “American lives, interests and
property.”

Read Reason‘s Ed Krayewski on “Four Reasons US
Intervention in Nigeria Is a Bad Idea”
here.