Sunday October 29, 2006

I've Been Thinking:

I just read an interview with Michael Phillips.
Philips is the young American from New Orleans who was kidnapped and held by Palestinians gunmen for 26 hours in the West Bank city of Nablus.

Michael Phillips said that he still does not know why he was kidnapped.
He said he is not a journalist.
He said it was not terror.
He wants to understand why he, who came to help out, was kidnapped.

I'll tell him why.
He is an American in a place where Americans are not welcome.
That makes him, and everyone like him, a perfect kidnap victim.
Phillips is a Westerner and as a Westerner he represents much of what is hated in that part of the world.
So even if his kidnapping was a criminal act and not a political act, the underlying reasons are the same.

All Americans are easy prey.