Defending the Indefensible

French journalists George Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot were taken hostage by Iraqi Salafists on August 20 and released on December 22. Since their ordeal, they've been showing signs of the Stockholm syndrome, though they probably sympathized with terrorists even before being captured. But even French jornalists can't defend radical Islam, as Malbrunot grudgingly admits in a (subscription only) interview with novelist Nidra Poller in the NY Sun, excerpted in the current Weekly Standard:

Poller: Would you call the people who were holding you insurgents, or resistants?

Malbrunot: For us it is clear: People who combat an illegal occupation that results from an illegal war are resistants. Resistance is a sacred right, whether you are Islamist or nationalist, you are resistants. However, when you capture people from a country that has nothing to do with the situation, then your methods have nothing to do with the resistance. Those methods are--uh--different.

Poller: When they take hostages from countries who have troops in Iraq, would that be resistance? Nick Berg?

Malbrunot: Would that be resistance? [Long silence.] That--that--they can capture them--negotiate--but not kill them. [Pause.] Taking hostages is a measure--it's--it's a method of terrorists.

Poller: Whether or not? Occupation or no occupation?

Malbrunot: Still it's all the more reprehensible when it hits people who have nothing to do with the war.

Earth to actual humans: beheading unarmed civilians isn't moral or justifiable whatever the circumstances. Too bad Europe--the cradle of the renaissance and the enlightenment--suffers from a collective civilization amnesia.