Feeble and unserious, indeed

Since Mark Steyn suddenly seems to be flavour of the month again on the right, an issue comes to mind. Today brings news that the Fox News reporter and cameraman (Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig) freed in Gaza recorded videos at gunpoint claiming that they had converted to Islam before they were released. Does Steyn's advice, offered in mockery to deceased hostage Ken Bigley, still apply in such situations --

If you're kidnapped, accept you're unlikely to survive, say "I'll show you how an Englishman dies", and wreck the video. If they want you to confess you're a spy, make a little mischief: there are jihadi from Britain, Italy, France, Canada and other western nations all over Iraq – so say yes, you're an MI6 agent, and so are those Muslims from Tipton and Luton who recently joined the al-Qaeda cells in Samarra and Ramadi. As Churchill recommended in a less timorous Britain: You can always take one with you. If Mr Blair and other government officials were to make that plain, it would be, to use Mr Bigley's word, “enough”. A war cannot be subordinate to the fate of any individual caught up in it.

And, if you don't want to wind up in that situation, you need to pack heat and be prepared to resist at the point of abduction. I didn't give much thought to decapitation when I was mooching round the Sunni Triangle last year, but my one rule was that I was determined not to get into a car with any of the locals and I was willing to shoot anyone who tried to force me. If you're not, you shouldn't be there.

None of the above would have guaranteed Mr Bigley's life, but it would have given him, as it did Signor Quattrocchi, a less pitiful death, and it would have spared the world a glimpse of the feeble and unserious Britain of the last few weeks.

UPDATE: As Dave Weeden reminds us in an e-mail, Steyn has in fact embraced his former position regarding the Gaza hostages. Sidenote: the David Warren that also features in that Glenn Greenwald link is a pioneer of the flypaper justification for the invasion of Iraq. By which logic, the two Foxmen should have been completely safe in Gaza, with all the bad guys attracted to Iraq.