(Report comment)

(Report comment)

Very good point, not one that that has been considered.

(Report comment)

Then some nosey, noisy Americans got involved. Mr. Miyagi said,”They don’t know what they’re doing. They wake up sleeping tiger”. He was right.
The sleeping tiger woke up and got me, Miyagi and all his cronies.

I am seriously concerned about the welfare of the three writers and hope everyone at Matador is wishing for their safe return. They are in a cage with a sleeping tiger. It’s probably best we don’t make too much noise and wake the tiger up.

Quietly, give your support to those who work secretly in the background, in Iran, my friends or those three writers are screwed.

(Report comment)

I’m a traveler – not a dopey, liberal backpacker. Even if I were the latter, I wouldn’t put myself in harm’s way without paying for the consequences.

I am sure the backpackers knew exactly what they were doing and I am sure once they get out they will tell you they deserved it. I don’t think they should be left to rot as some suggest, and I certainly don’t think they are stupid – but one can hardly be outraged at what is happening. I also am not losing sleep over it.

What I don’t like though, is how it seems everything is so black and white: you are either against them, bleating away on ABC or you are 100% behind them. I’m not against them but I’m not behind them either. I believe people should stretch their legs and go beyond the call of Western Europe but I think there is a huge difference between that and hiking in a uneasy Middle Eastern country.

That said, what I really wish the news would do is stop portraying them as “hikers” or “backpackers” – I bet if off the bat they had described them as journalists, then all this backlash wouldn’t have happened in the first place.

(Report comment)

There is a HUGE difference between backpacking on the Iranian border in a war zone, and ‘…that travel (outside of the U.S and perhaps Western Europe) is dangerous, reckless, and stupid.’ That’s just sloppy emotionalist exaggeration.

“This is what Sarah Shourd did with her articles on Yemen and Israel; she took risks and put herself in uncomfortable, unfamiliar situations and came out with stories that stick with the reader long after he/she has finished the last sentence.”
You’re absolutely right. She took risks. Period, full stop. The word risk has meaning, it’s not just there for decoration. The reason we get a frisson of adrenaline walking near the edge of a cliff is because it’s a risk. If we accept that risk (of falling off) because there might be a beautiful view that nobody’s ever seen before, we – as independent, intelligent adults – CHOOSE to trade the small chance of mortal peril in the hopes of gratification. That’s our choice. But then, if we go slip sliding over the edge, it’s not a tragedy, it’s a choice we made. Sometimes the dice are against you. We can feel a basic human sympathy for people in suffering, but when they DELIBERATELY PUT THEMSELVES IN A POSITION TO SUFFER…well, ultimately it’s their problem. Thanks Darwin.

What ‘people’ are commenting on is the absurdity of people choosing to take a very high risk, and then being surprised when it turns against them, and the ridiculous efforts extended by the US gov’t to ‘rescue’ them from a situation of their own choosing. It’s kind of like Siegfried and Roy – the dudes played with TIGERS. The fact that ultimately one of them got chewed was a) unsurprising, b) not worthy of more than simple sympathy, and c) certainly not worth the intervention of the US gov’t to save him.

There are oodles of interesting places to backpack in this world that aren’t in a war zone, and even if you felt compelled to backpack in Iraq, there’s lots of interesting bits of Iraq that aren’t near Iran. (And deliberate disingenuity doesn’t help your point. North Kurdistan is a resort area, lol. That’s hilarious. I’ll have to recommend that to my grandparents when they take to the motor home next summer.) To have deliberately chosen such a place, and particularly with their extensive backgrounds and knowledge – they were no novices, as you point out – was a clear choice. Personally, I do think it’s a little disrespectful to assume their choice was out of a cavalier disregard for the danger. They were professionals pursuing (I’d guess) their chosen occupations. Respect them for that, but aside from their employers who might have a moral obligation to try to beg them free, I feel no compunction about forgetting them and moving on to the next news item of the day. If they do get out, I’ll avidly read their story…because that’s why they took the risk (presumably). But I’m certainly not going to lose sleep over their fates.

The reason that they are being referred to as kids is because this sort of risk-taking behavior is very common to youth; be it because they either disregard the actual risks, or accept the risks because of a narcissistic belief in their ability to control events. Their biographies suggest to me too that they got a little cocky, but I’m not really invested enough in their outcomes to care. Of course, it’s not always youth: just google Pippi Bacca (30?) and how this hiker – “(who) wanted to show that she could put her trust in the kindness of local people” ended up.

To answer your specific question, ‘what if she’d been abducted in Yemen?’ – well, having been in Yemen myself extensively, I’d say it was because she stupidly ignored the long historical and cultural history of most of Yemen, which is a violent, godforsaken place with a brutal culture (especially toward women and girls). There are Yemenis I consider my close friends, both in Aden (mostly) but a few from the area of Jibla. There are some amazing things to see, eat, and do there. But I wouldn’t call it safe.

So no, to contradict your title – travel isn’t just for ‘idiotic idealists’. But ultimately, Darwin rules. Don’t be surprised if he bitch-slaps you for naive choices. And don’t be faux-shocked if the rest of us, who chose not to take such risks, aren’t terribly sad about the result.

(Report comment)

(Report comment)

(Report comment)

I wonder if you were too busy making smug analyses about my “rhetorical tactics” to actually bother to read my writing.

Nowhere did I try to confuse websites with comments. I made the point that ABC News is not a radical website, AND I made the point that the comments left there are not radical. Read this sentence:

“Finally, sadly enough, I don’t believe that the comments I quoted above are a small sampling of extremist views. I think they represent the views of a wide swath of people–even, I would venture, of the “mainstream”–in the U.S”

I also linked to Sarah’s story on Matador in order to illustrate how the comments found there are similar to the comments I’ve cited in this article, and how they all demonstrate a similar theme.

I therefore made the point that the comments I use in this article are NOT the exception to the rule not once, but twice, so I’m not sure how you came to the conclusion that I’m trying (and failing, as your smugness suggests) to conflate websites and comments.

Also, Sarah’s Golan Heights article was not a piece of “reporting,” as you claim–it is not meant to be a New York Times story explaining the history of Golan Heights. Rather, this is a piece of narrative non-fiction writing. I think it’s important to clarify the difference between a non-fiction essay and a piece of reporting. Obviously, no author is going to be able to summarize the history of the Israeli/Syrian conflict in 2,000 words or less and the goal of her piece is not do such a thing.

I also notice a particular doggedness in the way you insist on defining Syria as “the kind of place where 20,000 were killed in Hama when Assad repressed the Moslem Brotherhood.” So can we therefore define Israel as the kind of place where thousands of Lebanese were killed and over a million displaced in retaliation for an attack on seven Israeli soldiers? Can we define the U.S as the kind of place that would overthrow democratically elected governments in Guatemala and Chile? I don’t think defining countries as “the kind of place where…” is very helpful, nor is it the kind of journalism you claim to respect in your comment.

As for Sarah writing “nothing about Syria invading Israel from the Golan in 1967 and being pushed back after loss of innocent life,” actually, Sarah wrote about how the people living in Golan Heights rebelled until they forced the Israeli’s to push back.

You also try to use her statement “it seems hard to understand why Israel hangs onto such a small sliver of land despite the international outcry against its illegal occupation” as an example of how little she understands about the situation in Golan Heights. However, she goes on to explain why Israel hangs on to Golan Heights, and why this area is strategic for Israel, in the next two paragraphs.

Finally, as for the the story behind how the three of them ended up in Iran, maybe you should check out the statement written by their travel companion in The Nation: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/meckfessel

(Report comment)

I wrote that you were selecting the “most ignorant and extreme comments” to debunk and somehow you slid “extreme comments” into “extreme websites” (ABC news is obviously not extreme) which is not what I wrote. You really shouldn’t use that kind of rhetorical tactic.

We know that the three journalists did cross the Iranian border, so there has to be some explanation. You shouldn’t exclude all possible motivations because one motivation or another has to be true. I was agreeing with your assessment that they didn’t do it out of cluelessness. But that doesn’t leave many other explanations. They either crossed the border intentionally (in search of a story or for other reasons) or they did it unintentionally in spite of being experienced enough travellers to know that you leave yourself a margin of error when near a defended border. Either of those explanations makes more sense if they misguidedly believed that the Iranian government is more benign than it really is. It doesn’t make much sense to posit that they knew the Iranian government is paranoid and repressive and yet they went hiking right at the border where you can’t see the crossing. That would take you back to fecklessness. My guess of poor political thinking makes more sense. You seem to be denying all possibe motivations and yet we know it did happen.

I’m glad you brought up Sarah’s article on the Golan Heights which seemed more an exercise in political propaganda than in journalism. She wrote “it’s hard to understand why Israel hangs on to such a small sliver of land despite the international outcry against its illegal occupation.” Nothing in the article mentioning that, pre-1967, Syrian soldiers used to shoot from the Golan Heights down on Israeli farmers working their fields. Nothing about Syria invading Israel from the Golan in 1967 and being pushed back after loss of innocent life. Reading Sarah one would never know that Syria is the kind of place where 20,000 were killed in Hama when Assad repressed the Moslem Brotherhood. She doesn’t attempt to report both sides but she also doesn’t arrive at one side while struggling and refuting the evidence of the other side. She simply assumes away anything that might be troubling to her world-view by writing as if it doesn’t exist!

Just to be clear on where I’m coming from, I’m a liberal myself and I campaigned for Obama in the last election. I work for a non-profit to attempt to forestall climate change. What Sarah has written on Syria does make it seem, not that she is pro police state exactly, but, as is much more typical, that she is willing to imagine away the police state aspects of places like Syria to make things more conform with her political stance. That’s not journalism.

Anyway, let’s hope all three are freed soon.

(Report comment)