James Foley, Syria, 2012. (Manu Brabo)

ROCHESTER - While their son was held captive in Syria by ISIS forces, Diane and John Foley were told next to nothing by the U.S. government, which in turn told them to say nothing. Emails directly from James Foley's captors told them the same: Do not speak out.

James Foley, Aleppo, Syria – 08/12 (Nicole Tung)

In the wake of the brutal murder of their son by ISIS on Aug. 19, the family is establishing the James W. Foley Foundation to provide information and assistance for a unique group of Americans the Foleys hope never grows: families of hostages and former hostages.

John and Diane Foley are embraced by well-wishers during a Mass of healing, hope and peace in honor of their son, slain journalist James Foley, at Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Catholic church in Rochester on Sunday. (Bruce Preston / Union Leader)

Speaking quietly in her living room here on a late summer afternoon last week, Diane Foley told the Sunday News she has no idea how many families there may be like her own.

But she says she and her husband, Dr. John Foley, are determined to find out and bring them together to seek a consensus as to how to obtain information and, ideally, find ways to free those taken captive overseas.

She said the U.S. government needs to be "shrewder" in how it deals with hostage-takers, including perhaps negotiating, if only to better understand their motives and operations.

With ISIS now taking journalists and humanitarian aid workers, Foley said no one is truly safe.The foundation has applied for expedited 501-c3 tax-exempt status. In the meantime, it has renamed the "Free James Foley" website to JamesFoleyFund.org.

When asked about recent comments that the government threatened arrest should the Foleys attempt to ransom their son, Mrs. Foley acknowledged the threat, but said it came from only one person at the National Security Council, whom she declined to identify.

"I was really appalled at how this guy treated us," she said.

It was not, she believes, representative of the U.S. government as a whole.

She also said the only other "push-back" she received was last May when five families with ISIS-held hostages met in Washington and sought a joint meeting with U.S. officials.

"That surprised me,'' she said. "I thought, 'whoa, where is this coming from?'?"

She would like the Foley Foundation to become "a resource center" for information and to put a public spotlight on the issue of Americans held hostage and what U.S. policy should be.

"When the public doesn't know anything," she said, "it's easy for the government to forget."

Diane Foley cannot forget. She left her job as a nurse practicioner at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital two years ago when Jim Foley, doing freelance journalism in Syria, disappeared.

She knew something was wrong when he didn't call home at Thanksgiving 2012. But for nearly a year, the family didn't know where he might be or even if he were alive. Government officials were nice, she said, particularly the FBI; but cautioned the family not to speak out.

When they did learn Jim was alive and being held captive, Diane Foley took trips to Europe, speaking with hostages who had been freed by ISIS after ransoms were paid. She spoke with French and Spanish former hostages as well as a Dutch man who had known Jim in confinement and who had memorized a letter Jim had written to his parents.

She also was in touch with a Belgian resident whose son had joined ISIS and for a time was one of Jim's captors.

But here at home, the Foleys learned little from various government agencies, including the FBI, U.S. State Department and the White House.

"It was no one's job to be responsible for the situation," she said. "Government is just so, so big. It's a bureaucracy."

She said U.S. Sens. Kelly Ayotte and Jeanne Shaheen and U.S. Rep. Carol-Shea Porter were all helpful in arranging meetings for her, but were also stymied.

The New York Times last week quoted a government official, anonymously, who said the FBI team assigned to the Foleys could share only limited information because of its classified nature and of concern for causing more emotional strain.

"We cannot - and do not - want to give the families every single lead because some turn up to be dry holes, and we want to minimize the yo-yo effect," the official told the Times.

In 2011, James Foley was held captive in Libya for 44 days during the uprising that, with U.S. assistance, ended the Khadafy regime. A little more than a year later, he told his family he wanted to report from Syria but Mrs. Foley pleaded for him to stay, at least through Christmas.

"He chose to go because he wanted people to know the suffering of the people there," she said. "It was very hard not to be struck by the suffering."

He also thought Syria was actually safer.

"Jim felt more comfortable in Syria," she said. That was before ISIS became known.

She said that the family knew nothing of the July attempt to free her son and other hostages in Syria until the day President Obama called to express his condolences.

"I think it was wonderful what the Special Forces tried to do," she said. "But it was too late, too late," noting that the suspect site had been identified in April.

"I believe in America," Diane Foley told the Sunday News. "I hope we can do better."

WHAT WAS the Islamic State thinking? We know it is sophisticated in its use of modern media. But what was the logic of propagating to the world videos of its beheadings of two Americans (and subsequently a Briton) - sure to inflame public opinion?

There are two possible explanations. One is that these terrorists are more depraved and less savvy than we think. They so glory in blood that they could not resist making an international spectacle of their savagery and did not quite fathom how such a brazen, contemptuous slaughter of Americans would radically alter public opinion and risk bringing down upon them the furies of the U.S. Air Force.

The second theory is that they were fully aware of the inevitable consequence of their broadcast beheadings - and they intended the outcome. It was an easily sprung trap to provoke America into entering the Mesopotamian war.

Why?

Because they're sure we will lose. Not immediately and not militarily. They know we always win the battles but they are convinced that, as war drags on, we lose heart and go home.

They count on Barack Obama quitting the Iraq/Syria campaign just as he quit Iraq and Libya in 2011 and is in the process of leaving Afghanistan now. And this goes beyond Obama. They see a post-9/11 pattern: America experiences shock and outrage and demands action. Then, seeing no quick resolution, it tires and seeks out leaders who will order the retreat. In Obama, they found the quintessential such leader.

As for the short run, the Islamic State knows it will be pounded from the air. But it deems that price worth paying, given its gains in propaganda and prestige - translated into renown and recruiting - from these public executions.

Understanding this requires adjusting our thinking. A common mantra is that American cruelty - Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, "torture," the Iraq War itself - is the great jihadist recruiting tool. But leaving Iraq, closing Abu Ghraib and prohibiting "enhanced interrogation" had zero effect on recruiting. In fact, jihadi cadres from Mali to Mosul have only swelled during Obama's outstretched-hand presidency.

Turns out the Islamic State's best recruiting tool is indeed savagery - its own. Deliberate, defiant, triumphant. The beheadings are not just a magnet for psychopaths around the world. They are choreographed demonstrations of its own unbounded determination and of American helplessness. In Osama bin Laden's famous formulation, who is the "strong horse" now?

We tend to forget that at this stage in its career, the Islamic State's principal fight is intramural. It seeks to supersede and supplant its jihadi rivals - from al-Qaeda in Pakistan to Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria - to emerge as champion of the one true jihad.

The strategy is simple: Draw in the world's great superpower, create the ultimate foil and thus instantly achieve supreme stature in radical Islam as America's nemesis.

It worked. A year ago, the world had never heard of this group, then named ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria). Now it is the subject of presidential addresses, parliamentary debates and international conferences. It is the new al-Qaida, which itself has been demoted to JV.

Indeed, so eclipsed and upstaged is al-Qaida that its leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, scrambled to reveal the creation of a new India/South Asia branch. It announced itself this month with its first operation - a comically botched attack on a Pakistani frigate that left 10 al-Qaeda fighters dead and the ship intact.

While al-Qaida was being humiliated, a huge Paris conference devoted entirely to the Islamic State was convened by Secretary of State John Kerry. Like his other conferences, it failed. Obama's "broad coalition" remains a fantasy.

It's more a coalition of the unwilling. Turkey denied us the use of its air bases. The Sunni Arab states are reluctant to do anything militarily significant. And not a single country has volunteered combat troops. Hardly a surprise, given that Obama has repeatedly ruled that out for the U.S. itself.

Testifying on Wednesday to the Senate, Kerry declared that the Islamic State "must be defeated. Period. End of story." Not the most wisely crafted of declarations: The punctuational emphasis carried unfortunate echoes of Obama's promise about health care plans and the word "must" carried similar echoes of Obama's assertions that Bashar al-Assad had to go.

But Kerry's statement remains true for strategic and even moral reasons. But especially because when the enemy deliberately brings you into combat, it is all the more imperative to show the world that he made a big mistake.

Charles Krauthammer is a columnist for The Washington Post.