The wrong person?

The mother of Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor correspondent who
has been abducted in Iraq, issued a statement in which she referred to her
daughter as "the wrong person." Why? Because her daughter is a known
sympathizer with the Iraqi people, who has been involved in Middle
East reporting for a long time, has supported the Arab cause, even goes
around in a burka (full black cover).and has refused to have a security guard
with her. In other words if you totally identify with the Iraqis and present
their viewpoint, then they shouldn't kidnap you. That also implies that there
is a right person to be kidnapped, i.e. one who does not totally accept and
present the Iraqi point of view. Who would that be?
It tends to show that the journalism practiced by Americans and Europeans
who report from Iraq, and elsewhere in the Arab world, is not objective
journalism, but is biased pro-Arab journalism, because that is what they
believe and because they think that will shield them from danger. They take
the liberal-leftist approach of advocacy journalism as the only way to
survive in that environment. That's why Daniel Pearl was prepared to go
undefended into the "lion's den" and meet with Islamists whose cause he
sufficiently identified with that he thought it would protect him.
That's why so many western journalists are kidnapped in Iraq, because they
haven't realized that to the insurgents it doesn't matter how much you
identify with the struggle of the underdog, the war of the colored peoples
against the white oppressors. To the Islamist insurgents they aren't allies,
they are agents of the west, preaching freedom of the press and liberal
ideology, when the insurgents are the furthest thing from liberal. They are
the new fascists, killing anyone who does not agree with them, and many who
do.
I am reminded of a scene in the movie "Viva Zapata" when the President of
Mexico is taken by soldiers out into the countryside, and on the orders of the
Army Chief is shot. He starts to make a speech about duty and honor, but they
simply put on a siren to drown him out, and then shoot him. Being a liberal
can be a dangerous cover when fascism is active.
Last year an Irish woman, Margaret Hassan, who had married an Iraqi and
lived in Baghdad for 40 years and was running the office of CARE the
international human rights organization, was abducted and shot. Until they
actually found her body no-one who knew her believed they would shoot
her because she was so good, and helped so many Iraqis. But, what they
failed to understand is that she and Jill Carroll are precisely the "right"
kind of people. They are there, they are naive and they are vulnerable.
What could be better?