Actions have consequences.

This seemingly simple concept, one that most people learn as small children, has now socked the United States in the gut and one American journalist is paying the price. Kidnappers, who have identified themselves as the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, captured Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl Jan. 23 while he was on his way to interview the leader of an Islamic fundamentalist group with ties to the so-called airplane "shoe bomber" being held in the United States.

Their demands? Release all Pakistanis held by the United States in the war on terrorism, including those at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The U.S. government made a choice -- and continues to do so -- by classifying the captives in Cuba as "detainees" and not "prisoners of war." Like ripples through a still pond, that decision has enraged one group to the extent that it has taken a hostage.

Pearl is more than a journalist; he is a hard-working American doing what hundreds of millions of Americans do every day: his job. It just happened that his job placed him in a volatile part of the world. He is no different than the grocery-store clerk or the Fortune 500 CEO who work each day to make a living. They are not concerned that they may be captured on the way to work and it is unfair that Pearl's own government created a situation in which he had to have such a concern.

The totality of the blame cannot be placed solely on the U.S. government, however. The Pakistani group claiming responsibility crossed a line when they kidnapped Pearl. Pearl's presence in Pakistan was as neither a combatant nor a supporter of either side in the U.S. war on terrorism.

As a reporter, Pearl was obligated to gather information and report the facts to his readers without bias. In an effort to do so, he was captured by a fringe group to be used as leverage, a move even members of the group's own government have said was ill-conceived.

"While I have consistently opposed the use of indiscriminate force, which has resulted in the loss of thousands of innocent lives in Afghanistan and the continued mistreatment of POWs, the abduction of Mr. Pearl would in no way help the cause of the innocent," Pakistani politician Imran Khan told CNN.

The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty is alone on this. Holding Pearl for doing nothing more than his job will not accomplish the group's goal -- America, after all, does not negotiate. Journalists -- and citizens of any country on foreign soil -- should not be pawns in the worldwide terrorism chess game. And while the U.S. government may have instigated the kidnapping by an argument of semantics over the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, its actions do not constitute sufficient justification to take an innocent American hostage.

The job of a journalist is to accurately and fairly gather and report the news. They cannot reasonably be expected to achieve that end if they are forced to become part of the news themselves.