Adonis Diaries

There’s now two American journalists killed by the Islamic State ISIS.

People will probably be upset by the following words as callous. I don’t want to blame victims for their death, but their paths seem dangerously similar.

Both were freelancers. Both hopped around war zones.

Neither understood the languages of the places they covered. Neither knew those places well.

Tributes to them talk about how they were dedicated to telling the stories of people.

But if they were so dedicated to these individuals, why didn’t they stick around in the places they covered?

Why didn’t they live in these places rather than have “stints” in Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria?

Why didn’t the deaths of far more experienced journalists and local reporters forewarn them?

And why didn’t the news outlets that published their materials give them a contract?

The Global Post had a rather suspect article titled “Here’s what James Foley meant to us.”

The outlet didn’t even sign the guy after he won an award.

And why do we focus on these people? Because they’re American?

Are the 190,000 Syrians killed not worth us knowing their names?

I feel bad for the people who knew them, and if I ever fall victim to their fate then these words may prove to haunt me.

But if we truly abhor the group that killed them, and feel bad for what has happened to these journalists, then let us not glorify them any further. They aren’t “the story.” So many freelancers were just lucky: many went to places they could not locate on a map

• Note 1: So many didn’t even know the country, or knew the borders of the country or much of its history and culture.

  Lucky because those who assisted them were worth more than gold and barely got a hint of appreciation from the foreign journals

  We all have seen scores of people being slain like sheep and beheaded. But for such method to be applied on US citizens?

  Close combat is not appreciated by US military: the enemy must die by drones and airplanes in order to safeguard the illusion of not “really killing”

  Note 2: The Sotloff family appointed a lawyer claiming to be ready to dialogue with Abu Bakr on religion and Coran and he barely can speak Arabic.
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