One Cheer for Jill Carroll

I am glad to hear that Jill Carroll has been released. I am also glad to know that she has produced words of repudiation against the video "interviews" she was forced to make before her departure from Iraq. But I also think she has more to do.

This is not an easy entry to write. How does one criticize someone who just escaped death?

Please don't get me wrong. I am all for life, for those who choose it. If, in the faces of one's would-be murderers, someone chooses cooperation (as Carroll did), I will not begrudge her that choice. Conversely, if someone chooses death before dishonor (as Fabrizio Quatrocchi did), I will not begrudge him that choice, either. It is not for me to criticize those choices, made under duress. However, away from that duress, it is not unreasonable to expect statements of actual belief and opinion.

One telling indicator of someone's alignment is the people in the cheering section. As Debbie Schlussel points out, Jill Carroll claims among her supporters some fairly nasty anti-American jihad allies.

(Some people will take exception to the shrill tone of Debbie Schlussel's writings. Please bear in mind that Jill Carroll is from Ann Arbor, not too far from Debbie's home town of Detroit. Southeastern Michigan has some big problems with radical Muslims, and Debbie takes it personally.)

Sometimes, it is appropriate to "do as Romans do." In a warzone, the better thing is to "dance with the one that brung ya." Jill Carroll owed her nation, and her nation's soldiers, all her suppport while on foreign soil with them. If our soldiers' enemies thought her reporting was so great, then she owes our soldiers some huge apologies.

Add to all this the facts that Jill Carroll

• chose to tempt fate
• where US soldiers are fighting in a foreign combat zone, and the US Constitution doesn't apply

and you might understand why I find it a little difficult to come up with all three cheers for her release.

Three adjacent sentences from Jill Carroll's statement caught my attention, more for what they didn't say than what they did:

I want to be judged as a journalist, not as a hostage.

How about as a human being? You know, subject to those rules that most other human beings find good and just? Or is she thinking that, as a journalist, she's supposed to be "above it all"?

It could be that she is trying to avoid being "blacklisted" by her fellow liberal journalists, which suggests to me that her allegiance goes more to her profession than to her citizenship. This would be profoundly hypocritical of her. Her employer and occupation depend on the Freedom of the Press defended by her nation's soldiers, not by her fellow journalists.

I remain as committed as ever to fairness and accuracy–to discovering the truth–and so I will not engage in polemics.

"Not engage in polemics" because of her commitment to "fairness and accuracy"? Is that how she justifies saying nothing about the righteousness of freeing Iraqis from brutal tyrants like Saddam Hussein and al-Zarqawi and her kidnappers?

But let me be clear: I abhor all who kidnap and murder civilians, and my captors are clearly guilty of both crimes.

But nowhere does she suggest that the primary purpose of coalition forces in Iraq now is to defeat and prosecute such kidnappers and murderers. Nor does she close the door on those who accuse the US military en masse of such crimes.

The coming months might show Jill Carroll to be a hyper-patriot. She might reject the sympathies of those who would return Iraq to the rule of a bloody iron fist. She might post on the Internet some videos of herself hugging our soldiers. After meeting the medieval criminals who are trying to ruin Iraq, such reparations would be the right thing to do.

I won't hold my breath. But I will watch carefully.

Posted on 04/02/2006 at 12:21:00 AM EST.