Useful Idiots' Stockholm Syndrome

[Chris]

Useful Idiots' Stockholm Syndrome

Useful Idiots' Stockholm Syndrome
By Robert Spencer

Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, the leftist American hikers who unwittingly ventured across the Iran/Iraq border and were convicted of espionage and imprisoned for two years in Iran, have been freed – and at a press conference Sunday, revealed that they were none the wiser for their ordeal.

They indulged in some moral equivalence: "Two years in prison is too long, and we sincerely hope for the freedom of other political prisoners and other unjustly imprisoned people in America and Iran." They assured the right-thinking world that their hearts (obviously not their minds) were in the right place: said Bauer, "The irony is Sarah [another hiker who was freed earlier], Josh and I oppose U.S. policies towards Iran which perpetuate this hostility."

They thanked some of the world's leading enemies of freedom and Useful Idiots for fighting for their freedom, including Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, limousine leftist Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Code Pink's manipulative propagandist Cindy Sheehan, hard-Left America-hating pseudo-scholar Noam Chomsky, and the addle-brained actor/activist Sean Penn.

Bauer appeared to be on the verge of an independent thought when he said: "We were convicted of espionage, because we are American. It's that simple. No evidence was ever presented against us. That is because there is no evidence and because we are completely innocent." But any hope that he might realize that the Iranian hostility toward the United States is similarly irrational and unjustified proved unfounded. For above all, Bauer said: "The only explanation for our prolonged detention is the 32 years of mutual hostility between America and Iran."

The "only explanation"? Really? Well, actually in other remarks Bauer made it clear that he thought that America was more culpable than Iran: "In prison, every time we complained about our conditions, the guards would immediately remind us of comparable conditions at Guantanamo Bay. They would remind us in other parts of the world and the conditions that Iranians and others experience in prisons in the U.S. We do not believe such human rights violations on the part of our government justify what has been done to us. Not for a moment. However, we do believe these actions on the part of the U.S. provide an excuse for other governments, including the government of Iran to act in kind."

It is clear from this that Shane Bauer, like Barack Obama, Ron Paul and so many others on all points along the political spectrum, believes that the actions of the United States provoke Muslims to behave badly, and that if the U.S. would only behave decently, then the Muslims would calm down, and a new era of peace would dawn. While this view is common among followers of Paul on the Right, it is much more prevalent on the Left, and indeed forms the underlying assumption of all of Obama's foreign policy.

The bitterly ironic aspect of this assumption is its underlying paternalism. Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, as well as Barack Obama, no doubt regard the nineteenth century British colonialist notion of the "White Man's Burden" to civilize nonwhite peoples as racist, arrogant, and ethnocentric; nonetheless, they hold to a modern-day form of the same racist, arrogant and ethnocentric notion.

In Shane Bauer's world, as bad as the Iranian government is, it is only bad because it is reacting to the evil actions of the U.S. government. This assumes that the Iranians are passive reactors who cannot formulate any decisions or take any actions of their own; they can only react to the actions of the Americans. If the Americans treat them unjustly, they will in turn act unjustly also, but they ultimately hold no responsibility for their actions. Only the Americans have any such responsibility.

The idea that the Iranian government might have hated and mistreated him and his friends for reasons of their own, unconnected to anything the U.S. government had done or could do, never seems to have occurred to Bauer. The possibility that the Islamic contempt and hatred for unbelievers, and the jihad that is prescribed for Muslims to wage against those unbelievers, might have been a motivating factor in his abduction, show trial, and imprisonment, doesn't seem to have entered Bauer's mind for a moment – even as he subsisted on bread and water and paced around his cell in Tehran. The possibility that even if the American government had behaved with perfect and utterly unimpeachable rectitude toward Iran, the Iranians still would have abducted, imprisoned and tortured him, appears inconceivable to Bauer.

And so it is clear that Shane Bauer is not only suffering from Stockholm Syndrome and identifying with his captors; he is also a racist and Western supremacist of the first order, holding the benighted Third-World Iranians utterly free of responsibility for how they treated him, for after all – he essentially said – what else can one expect from such people?

If Shane Bauer took realistic stock of what happened to him over the last two years, he would accord his captors more respect than that. He would grant them the respect of being thoughtful agents who could do more than simply react to the actions of the U.S. (and, presumably, the Zionist Entity). He would throw off the unconscious paternalism of the Left and excoriate the Iranians for pursuing their jihad against America even against unarmed and obviously innocent Useful Idiot leftist hikers.

But his press conference on Sunday showed no sign that such an awakening was in the offing.

[mattfivefour]

See? Lenin DID leave us something useful— the phrase "useful idiots". He used it to describe Communist sympathizers in the West. Every enemy of democracy and freedom needs to have useful idiots in the opposing camp! It is far easier to sap an enemy's strength internally than externally. The Viet Cong knew this and waged a most successful campaign against American intervention in Vietnam by making use of youthful idealism to create thousands of "useful idiots" in America who ultimately forced that nation to capitulate and leave SE Asia. We can look forward to growing numbers of the same in the war against fundamentalist Islam.

[Chris]

See? Lenin DID leave us something useful— the phrase "useful idiots". He used it to describe Communist sympathizers in the West. Every enemy of democracy and freedom needs to have useful idiots in the opposing camp! It is far easier to sap an enemy's strength internally than externally. The Viet Cong knew this and waged a most successful campaign against American intervention in Vietnam by making use of youthful idealism to create thousands of "useful idiots" in America who ultimately forced that nation to capitulate and leave SE Asia. We can look forward to growing numbers of the same in the war against fundamentalist Islam.

I wonder if the Iranians made threats against the two to make some sort of speech that would place blame on the U.S.?? I find it hard to believe that people would suffer two years worth of jail time to argue the case for their jailers. there's no telling what the Iranian's threatened to do if they didn't make that little speech.

[froggy]

"In Shane Bauer's world, as bad as the Iranian government is, it is only bad because it is reacting to the evil actions of the U.S. "


As Michael Savage says,"Liberalism is a mental disorder." Similar to the rationale the Left uses in defending the withholding of pictures/video of the now deceased Osama Bin-laden. "We don't want to offend Muslims and incite more violence." It's a good thing bombing and shooting Muslims doesn't offend them or all hell would break loose. It's no wonder so many of our veterans have psychological problems when they come home. How do you reconcile being told to shoot at someone but -by all means- not offend them while doing so?

[Meg]

See? Lenin DID leave us something useful— the phrase "useful idiots". He used it to describe Communist sympathizers in the West. Every enemy of democracy and freedom needs to have useful idiots in the opposing camp! It is far easier to sap an enemy's strength internally than externally. The Viet Cong knew this and waged a most successful campaign against American intervention in Vietnam by making use of youthful idealism to create thousands of "useful idiots" in America who ultimately forced that nation to capitulate and leave SE Asia. We can look forward to growing numbers of the same in the war against fundamentalist Islam.

This is only partially true about Vietnam; the rest of the truth is that the adult generation in charge of government and corporations were making huge profits on the flesh and blood of the younger generation. That being said, it is interesting how Lenin came up with the concept of useful idiots. Satan is getting a lot of mileage out of the same tactic to undermine the church from within...

On another note, the following is quoted from the OP:

If Shane Bauer took realistic stock of what happened to him over the last two years, he would accord his captors more respect than that. He would grant them the respect of being thoughtful agents who could do more than simply react to the actions of the U.S. (and, presumably, the Zionist Entity). He would throw off the unconscious paternalism of the Left and excoriate the Iranians for pursuing their jihad against America even against unarmed and obviously innocent Useful Idiot leftist hikers.

But his press conference on Sunday showed no sign that such an awakening was in the offing.

This is all too accurate, and is a perfect snapshot of what happens when personal responsibility is devalued...

[Meg]

"In Shane Bauer's world, as bad as the Iranian government is, it is only bad because it is reacting to the evil actions of the U.S. "


As Michael Savage says,"Liberalism is a mental disorder." Similar to the rationale the Left uses in defending the withholding of pictures/video of the now deceased Osama Bin-laden. "We don't want to offend Muslims and incite more violence." It's a good thing bombing and shooting Muslims doesn't offend them or all hell would break loose. It's no wonder so many of our veterans have psychological problems when they come home. How do you reconcile being told to shoot at someone but -by all means- not offend them while doing so?

[Mad Matt]

As Michael Savage says,"Liberalism is a mental disorder." Similar to the rationale the Left uses in defending the withholding of pictures/video of the now deceased Osama Bin-laden. "We don't want to offend Muslims and incite more violence." It's a good thing bombing and shooting Muslims doesn't offend them or all hell would break loose. It's no wonder so many of our veterans have psychological problems when they come home. How do you reconcile being told to shoot at someone but -by all means- not offend them while doing so?

Now our troops are being told not to talk about politics,women,religion, and above all don't pass gas when on leave! This is for real! Marines...on liberty...not allowed to talk about women or fart! Oh, but shooting them is just fine.

[froggy]

Now our troops are being told not to talk about politics,women,religion, and above all don't pass gas when on leave! This is for real! Marines...on liberty...not allowed to talk about women or fart! Oh, but shooting them is just fine.

Marines not being able to fart on leave. I used to be attached to a Marine infantry company as a Navy hospital corpsman. I can tell you from personal experience that if that order is obeyed, the Obummer white house will finally succeed in its mission to disband the Marines--Oh, the carnage of exploding soldiers--the pops heard 'round the world!

[Elijah's Mantle]

sums it up I reckon

and we wunder bout the future

[JAyres]

Why are they not allowed to pass gas on leave? That doesn't make any sense. Do muslims not fart?

[LivnForChrist]

Why are they not allowed to pass gas on leave? That doesn't make any sense. Do muslims not fart?

Of course not and their mess doesn't stink either.