Come Back Alive

I first became interested in Robert Young Pelton when I was browsing in a bookstore a few years back and picked up his "World's Most Dangerous Places", paged through it and decided to buy it. He has a website, www.comebackalive.com and I scroll through the Black Flag Cafe on that site every now and again to see what he's up to, where he's been and so on. It doesn't seem like he's done much trekking in the world's hot spots lately or maybe I just missed it and he's off exploring the wonders of adventure travel in Togo or Myanmar right now.

Anyway, he's kind of a fascinating character, I think. Canadian national (I don't think that's changed) who lives in southern California and became pretty well known as the "reporter" who first interviewed the American born jihadist, John Walker Lindh, when he was captured in that prison battle in Afghanistan. He comes across as rather conventionally anti-American but I wonder if perhaps that just expedient since it probably opens more doors in the WMDP to be sympathetic to the enemies of the "Great Satan" than if he ran around humming God Bless America. If I ever met him, I'd like to ask him if there isn't some small part of his beating heart that doesn't kind of wish that the WMDP would stay that way. Does he really want there to be a stable and safe Iraq or Afghanistan? Because what would he write about then?