What's the plan?

President-elect Obama has a grandmother and other relatives who live in Kenya. He's not terribly close to them, because he wasn't close with his father and they lived on another continent, but still, they're relatives (some by blood, some by marriage or African tradition). They live in Kenya, which, as small African nations go, is relatively stable. Certainly it is in far better shape (and a much closer ally of the U.S.) than its neighbors, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Uganda. But it's still a small African nation suffering from some political instability, and which earlier this year had a spate of politically-related violence which caused the U.S. to temporarily withdraw our Peace Corps personnel.

So here's my question. What's the plan for when a relative of the President of the United States is kidnapped by some thugs in Kenya? Hopefully, nobody would be that stupid, but there's a lot of bad guys in that part of the world, and they've been known to do a lot of things which we would consider stupid. Our government excels at drawing up contingency plans, so what's the plan for that one?

On the one hand, such an action is an attack not just on the individual, but on the United States itself, because the person is being targeted specifically because they are related to our President, and their intent (presumably) would be to affect his actions, affect the policy of the United States of America. We cannot tolerate such an attack.

On the other hand, Sen. Obama's relatives (many of them, at least) are not American citizens, and the attack would not be on American soil. We may have very little jurisdiction (if any), and would be entirely dependent on the Kenyan government to invite our assistance.

We could also not afford to capitulate to their demands, but the image of terrorists beheading an Obama relative would be a powerful image to terrorists, who revel when they can show the impotence of America to stop them. Meanwhile, President Obama surely has some emotional attachment to such family members and would thus have a personal, emotional connection to the events, which would call into question his objectivity.

So would President Obama do a Bartlett and invoke the 25th Amendment? I would hope not, frankly (and not just because "Acting President Biden" scares the crap out of me), because that would give terrorists an enormous amount of power over our country, the ability to force a change in leadership during a crisis.

I think it's important to make clear in advance that President Obama would not step aside in such an event, and that the United States government would, while providing any assistance requested by a foreign goverment, consider that a Kenyan crime to be handled by the Kenyan authorities. We have long had a policy of not negotiating with terrorists, and we should continue that policy, even if that results in the terrorists killing their hostages. Doing anything else would encourage the terrorists and help them meet their objectives.