The release of journalist Jill Carroll is wonderful news-what an ordeal she and her family have had. But wait!
Carroll says her captors were really nice. I didn’t get the impression they were that nice back when they were threatening to chop off her head. I hate to quibble about this, and we should definitely cut her lots of slack…but…
I remember when Carroll’s father was begging for her release, he said something to the effect that her captors to release her because she was a sympathetic reporter who could get across their story. How true.
As Powerline noted:
“No doubt her joy at being freed overwhelms all else, and it is probably churlish to critique her public comments. Nevertheless, I want to register a small protest against her statement, widely quoted in the press, that she was ‘well treated’ by her captors. This is a sentiment that one often hears from people who have been released by kidnappers; one gets the sense that the victims are grateful–understandably, perhaps–to the terrorists for letting them go.
“But the fact is that Ms. Carroll was not ‘well treated’ by her captors. She says that they ‘never hit me. They never even threatened to hit me.’ Terrific. But they did threaten to cut off her head, and kept her in fear of her life for nearly three months. To anyone who saw the videos in which she pleaded for her life, her mental distress was obvious. And the kidnappers murdered Carroll’s translator in the course of capturing her.
“No doubt, in saying that she had been ‘well treated,’ Ms. Carroll was mostly trying to assure her friends and family that her physical condition was OK. That’s obviously appropriate. But let’s not encourage a lot of warm feelings toward the murderous thugs who kidnapped Carroll, shot her translator, and may well have received a ransom to let her go.”