You really can’t make up this stuff:
Well, yes, the Taliban raped me, but they also respected me — they are not monsters
by Andy McCarthy, National Review Online
From the Brussels Journal comes the mind-blowing story of a left-wing Dutch journalist, Joanie de Rijke, who went to Afghanistan to conduct a sympathetic interview with Taliban jihadists who had just killed 10 French troops. Naturally, she was abducted and serially raped for six days. And now she is angry … not at the chief Taliban thug — who showed her “respect,” though, regrettably, “he could not control his testosterone” — but at the Dutch and Belgian governments who refused to pay the $2 million ransom the jihadists demanded. And of course, in the Netherlands, the media and the government are furious at Geert Wilders for pointing out the obvious:
This story is a perfect illustration of the moral decline of our elites. They are so blinded by their own ideology that they turn a blind eye to the truth. Rape? Well, I would put this into perspective, says the leftist journalist: the Taliban are not monsters. Our elites prefer to deny reality rather than face it. One would expect: a woman is being raped and finds this unbearable. But this journalist is not angry because the Muslim involved also showed respect. Our elites, whether they are politicians, journalists, judges, subsidy gobblers or civil servants, are totally clueless. Plain common sense has been dumped in order to deny reality. It is not just this raped journalist who is suffering from Stockholm syndrome, but the entire Dutch elite. The only moral reference they have is: do not irritate the Muslims – that is the one thing they will condemn.
Mr McCarthy really doesn’t do the Brussels Journal article justice; the story is worse than he indicated.
Joanie de RijkeMrs. de Rijke is an attractive 43 year old Dutch free-lance journalist with long blonde hair. Though she is a Dutch citizen, she does not live in the Netherlands but in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern half of neighboring Belgium. Most of the time she writes for P-Magazine, a glossy Flemish men’s weekly which features pictures of girls in lingerie and skimpy bathing suits, pornographic cartoons, articles about fast cars and political pieces.
Last Fall, de Rijke was traveling in Afghanistan for P-Magazine. Dressed in a burka, she tried to get in touch with the Taliban to do a human interest story about them. She managed to contact a group of Taliban fighters who had ambushed and killed ten French soldiers in August. De Rijke arranged an interview with Ghazi Gul, the commander of the group. When she and her interpreter arrived for the interview, however, Gul abducted her. He sent the interpreter back to Kabul with a message for P-Magazine demanding a ransom of $2 million for the journalist or he would slit her throat.
The Dutch government refused to pay. So did the Belgian government, although Michael Lescroart, P-Magazine’s editor, claims that initially the Belgian authorities were willing to pay but later changed their minds because they are “cowards.” Lescroart also said that he believed the group which abducted de Rijke were not real Taliban but
“some sort of Taliban ‘freelancers,’ scum who were after money. They did not want the real Taliban to know what they were doing, because the real Taliban do not accept that kind of behavior.”
Given P-Magazine’s anti-Americanism and leftist inclinations Lescroart probably harbors sympathy for the Taliban and finds it hard to accept that the “good guys” do evil things.
During her captivity, de Rijke was raped repeatedly by Gul. In her book In de handen van de Taliban, which she published last month, she writes that the Taliban commander
“could not control his testosterone. I had the impression that afterwards he regretted what had happened. He knew it was wrong.”
The noble savage even “invited her to a threesome,” i.e. to have sex with him and one of his three wives. “Ghazi was a very religious man. It is all so hypocritical. He was a complete fool,” she writes.
This is amazing. Not only are the Taliban depicted as having shown “respect” to a woman they raped — surely the desire for ransom had nothing to do with that! — but the leftists go so far as to say that, well, these guys couldn’t have been the real Taliban, ’cause the real Taliban aren’t that bad.
These people really are fools! They send an innocent, naïve woman in to interview a group of Islamist terrorists who recently murdered ten Western soldiers, and then are shocked, shocked! when the pretty Western journalist isn’t treated as they’d expect a Westerner to treat her. Said naïve Westerner then blames it on testosterone, never once seeming to consider that the Taliban, a group which opposes educating women, and which regards them as little better than chattels, might consider her fair game without a man and Islamic family to protect her.
You can’t get much dumber than that.
Thomas Landen, the Brussels Journal author, had it right in his conclusion:
And so, in a way Joanie de Rijke is right. She did not develop Stockholm syndrome while in captivity. She had the syndrome even before she left for Afghanistan. It is natural that she should resent her state of mind being described as Stockholm syndrome, because she considers it to be the state of mind of a righteous and intelligent modern intellectual. It is the state of mind which she shares with almost the entire political and intellectual class of Europe today, that of the hostage to political correctness.
Hat tip to Gretchen for the article.
Pho?
This is so disturbing (on several levels) that all I can say is this post should be entitled Insane Liberal of the Week.
*Surely Ms. de Rijke’s defense of her rapist is an ugly and offensive affront to rape victims everywhere.
So we agreeing that soldiers who rape captives demonstrate the moral depravity of their cause?
Yes or no?
There is no limit to the excessive moral relativism of the left. Perhaps it is because their abiding faith is a substitute for traditional spirituality.
They rail about ‘torturing of prisoners to death’ but how many of those at Gitmo were beheaded?
The Taliban were monsters and they have not changed.
They gay community seems to have ignored the treatment of homosexuals in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Accused homosexuals were placed in brick structures and then crushed when the building was knocked down. Yet they can rail against domestic ‘gay bashing’ that is usually lovers’ quarrels that got out of control. Perhaps the head of the ACLU puts his sexuality behind his sick ideology.
The militant ‘feminists’ ignored abuse of women that was part of a sick subset of a culture.
In Orwell’s 1984, Winston learned to love Big Brother.
Perhaps the attitudes of the reporter show that Orwell was off by a few years. The apologists for terror may be their fifth column amongst their intended victims.
This is more than the Stockholm Syndrome.
It is a rejection of decency in the guise of demanding utter perfection in those who would combat evil.
Warfare, like politics, is the art of the possible. There will always be mistakes made and collateral damage. The alternative is a prolonged period of reflection and paralysis by analysis. Evil will never be defeated by extensive omphaloskepsis.
At least they didn’t saw her head off and stick the video on the Internet. Then liberals would really have to defend her.
Ok, the lady is looking on the bright side. She got herself some strange stuff that other ladies go to Bangkok and have to pay for.
This is actually somewhat unsurprising. Rape tends to bring out a disturbing ability to blame the victim instead of the perpetrator, from the Taliban claiming that a woman who goes out in public w/o her burqa deserves to be raped to a Westerner criticizing rape victims for wearing “slutty” clothes… it’s not too difficult to imagine that someone internalized the “blame the victim” mentality. The “he couldn’t control his testosterone” bit proves my point. This doesn’t make Ms. de Rijke’s comments any less dumb – indeed, it makes them doubly harmful, since it not only blames Belgium for her rape but perpetuates the idea that the perpetrators of rape are not fully responsible for their crime.
That said, has anyone seen any American liberals defend Ms. de Rijke’s comments? Anyone?
(crickets)
Thought so. Carry on.
Compared to our homegrown animals, these Taliban were saints. (Link is safe, a legitimate news story, but very disturbing.)
It really sounds like she enjoyed it.
They send an innocent, naïve woman in to interview a group of Islamist terrorists
Except that she wasn’t innocent or naive – she may have been self-deceived or in denial but not naive or innocent. I am not a professional journalist and even I know that to go into a country where women are treated worse than dogs to interview misogynistic extremists is a deadly seriously risk of one’s life. This is right up there with Beverly Giesbrecht (AKA, Khadija Abdul Qahar after converting to Islam) or perhaps even Roxanna Saberi. Common sense seems to be the missing component.
There is no limit to the excessive moral relativism of the left. Perhaps it is because their abiding faith is a substitute for traditional spirituality.
They rail about ‘torturing of prisoners to death’ but how many of those at Gitmo were beheaded?
It takes a very special type of stupidity to rail about “moral relativity” and then provide an example of just that two sentences afterwards…
Looks like Mr. Grey Ghost picked the wrong Insane Liberal of the week. Joy Behar is downright ultra conservative next to this one.
I dunno about “insane liberal”. “Rough sex sex-tourist” is what I’m thinking. With “let’s not let this ____ fool us into thinking that anything happened that she did not go looking for”.
[...] Commonsense Political Thought: Who to Blame? The Muslims who Raped her, or Western Civilization [...]
She became a whore by consent by seeking out a misguided reason for going to that country, wanted the government to pay for her, and got upset when they refused to pay for because she in all honesty not worth it as a woman or human being.
She is mentally ill and this was all caused by her own actions and now she just wants more attention.
All whores want that in the end, and when they are in the entertainment industry or media, they will do anything for a story.
The Taliban is laughing at her and her feelings, after all they got sex for a week in exchange for $137,000 and some cookies and tea.
She is Non-Profit Whore that pays other people to abuse her and gets others to pay for it, well, she got what she deserved and now she can go all of the globe and talk about it……for money!
It appears that many of those who adopt Islam are moral weaklings who cannot control their testosterone. Thus a mere glimpse at an ankle or head hair turns the males into raging beasts.
It appeared that some of the 9/11 killers spent their last days in some strip bars. There must be some ‘secret Surah’ that grants indulgences for drinking haram beverages if you are going to stiff the infidel barkeep. I doubt if any of the strippers they leered at were as virginal as those they expected to meet in their childish version of Paradise.
Note that this is not a blanket indictment of Islam, only of those who use a perversion of faith to justify the wholesale slaughter of innocents.
Someone told me that Fred Thomas is not his/her real name, and that he/she belongs to the Taliban. Anyone else here hear the same story?
Perry, I dunno, but I think he just proved my point.
All of a sudden, Bulldozer girl comes to mind.
Who?
The one that tried to stop an Israeli Bulldozer about 5 years ago. The operator didn’t see her protesting, and………
Her name was Rachel Corrie:
Why am I not surprised to see Yorkshire laughing off the murder of American citizens by the soldiers of another country?