Glenn Greenwald: The full-chested warriors -- Up Close and Personal

When Fox News journalists Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig were being held by Gaza kidnappers, they were used as solemn symbols of our grand struggle against Islamic fascists. But ever since they were released, physically unharmed, they have become, as John Amato documented the other day, the targets of the same sort of hostility and bizarre resentment which was directed at Jill Carroll when she was released. It's almost as though the fact that they weren't killed -- and then refused to read some fictitious propaganda script about their captivity -- instantaneously transformed them from glorious martyrs in the War on Terror to impediments which needed to be neutralized through attacks on their mental health and character.

Yesterday, David Warren, a columnist for Real Clear Politics and The Ottawa Citizen, attacked Centanni and Wiig for being cowards and "men without chests" and said that they illustrate so much of what is wrong with the West and why we are losing to the Islamofascists:

The case of the two Fox News journalists, held hostage in Gaza, is worth dwelling upon. . . .

The degree to which our starch is awash is exhibited in the behaviour of so many of our captives, but especially in these two.