So a Canadian and his pregnant American wife decide to go backpacking in Afghanistan and, surprise, their little idealistic holiday goes rather south.
Now the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), or as a good friend calls it “Victim TV”, can’t stop reporting on the Joshua and his return to civilization. It’s fucking nauseating since these people did it to themselves and considering Joshua’s pedigree (he was previously married to Omar Khadr’s older sister).
CBC is flogging this thing to death, with a complete disregard for the sheer stupidity of Joshua’s and Caitlin’s actions (I have yet to see that even discussed in their coverage), which included getting pregnant and giving birth during five years of captivity. It’s all about Joshua’s great, heroic struggle.
I think I read that she had been repeatedly raped while in captivity. Those kids may not be his. So I’m not sure I’m picking up what Velomont is putting down WRT her getting pregnant and having kids.
This is another one of those “mixed feelings” situations. They suffered a horrible ordeal, and their children didn’t deserve any of it, but who the hell decides to go backpacking in Afghanistan when you are (or your wife is) pregnant?
According to Reuters, Boyle refused to accept a U.S. military flight out of Afghanistan, apparently on the same “moral” principles that led him to characterize himself as a “pilgrim”.
Who? The kind of guy with a weird history with Islamic terrorism.
Like you, I have mixed feelings about this. It almost feels like he was actively seeking the Taliban out, but even so, no one deserves to be kidnapped and raped.
Them poor babies! The parents should have been left to their own devices in Pakistan, I bet they would be back in Afghanistan already. Why do these people think it is safe to go to these countries and just walk around, for whatever reason? They are asking to be kidnapped, tortured, and raped or worse, killed. They hate western infidels! God, that is just plain stupid!
If the OP’s point is that we throw the word hero around way too much, I’m in total agreement. I don’t even think every single person who died on 9/11 was a hero. Sure, first-responders who ran back into burning buildings after already rescuing several people were heroes, but people who simply happened to get caught in the rubble and expired were not heroes. They were hapless, tragic victims of fate.
Now, Boyle and his wife do not even appear to be victims of fate. They seem to be victims of their own dumbassery. That doesn’t make them heroes.
I suppose people think there’s an obvious comparison to someone like Jaycee Dugard, but she was in fact a victim of fate, and she was a child when she was kidnapped. She also made the best of a really difficult situation, actually homeschooling the children born of rape, with no special materials to do so. I don’t see the Boyle couple doing anything like that, and they had some control over their fertility (yes, I know the wife could have been raped, but I saw a picture of at least one of the children, and he does not look half Arab). Then, Dugard effected her own escape when she was old enough to think her way through it.
I don’t have a problem with someone calling Dugard a hero, but that doesn’t somehow mean that every victim of a kidnap gets called a hero.
Just going through an ordeal does not make you a hero. Living through the day used to be an ordeal. Is every person born before bows and arrows, and food storage technology a hero? Everyone who ever survived an infection before the days of antibiotics? Everyone who made a long journey before trains existed? I don’t think so. Let’s reserve the word hero for the truly heroic.
I have a few points regarding Joshua & co. The first is that there are some places one simply shouldn’t go. Present day Afghanistan, northern Iraq, Syria, North Korea, etc all fall into that category. My problem with this is that people often get into trouble and some western government has to squander money, and possibly lives, in trying to rescue these people.
My second issue is with the CBC. They just can’t let this story go and they are really milking the “return to civilization” and introducing the kids to Smith’s Falls aspect, without any critical or objective analysis whatsoever. And this has been ongoing since the story broke, wholly focused on what a wonderful Canadian story this is. It is not a wonderful Canadian story; it is the story of two people who did something extremely stupid and reckless.
Regarding their decision to have kids, various news sites have recently released this gem:
“Former hostage Joshua Boyle said Monday he and his wife decided to have children even while being held captive because they always planned to have a big family and decided, ‘Hey, let’s make the best of this and at least go home with a larger start on our dream family.’"
Well isn’t that just peachy? What zany antics and hijinks! This will surely be the next big romcom. Maybe even next summer’s blockbuster. Is this guy fucking serious? Does he have an Al Qaeda or Taliban preferred customer card that allows him to have a five year adventure camping trip without worrying about execution?
Yes, that too! Maybe I’ll go on one of those Taliban packages. I could take on of their workshops, like Tuscan cooking, stained-glass, or small-engine repair!
They are idiotic people–and I read a transcript of a chat alleged to be with the husband pre-kidnapping that, if accurate, shows him to be a really shitty person in general.
But silver lining: they did get a nice weight loss program out of the deal. The videos I’ve seen, they actually look much better than they did pre-Taliban. Caitlan looks kind of hot in her headscarf, when before they went she was totally platonic.
It’s not getting much coverage south of the border, even though she’s American, but I did see a sound bite from her father, who said he had never approved of her husband and couldn’t understand what kind of man would (his words) force a pregnant woman to go backpacking anywhere, let alone in Afghanistan.
It’s all relative. One article I read pointed out that in multiple videos that seemed to be recorded weeks or months apart, one of the kids was wearing the “same filthy clothing” in each.
