Rochester NH Kidnapper Says He’s a Victim…

I was in New Hampshire’s “Lilac City” over the weekend–Rochester, New Hampshire. Home to my mother, my sister and her family, we gathered at my Mom’s to put up her Christmas tree.
There’s really only one way that I know of to get to my Mom’s place. You have to drive right through downtown and bear left in the middle of town. It just so happens that turn is directly across the street from the Hillary Clinton campaign office where Leeland Isenberg claimed he had a bomb and held people hostage.
The New Hampshire State Police cruisers were gone. The satellite trucks for the news media had left town. The Clinton for President office was locked up and the lights were off. Traffic was heavy in anticipation of Rochester’s annual Christmas Parade which would take place that evening. Life in this tiny New Hampshire city had returned about as close to normal as it could less than 48 hours after the peaceful conclusion to a national news event.
It was almost as if it hadn’t ever happened at all.
One person who was hoping for a different turn out was the “bomber.” Leeland Isenberg had hoped he would be dead at the end of this melodrama.
From the New York Daily News:

In fact, he ate a “last supper” at Fat Tony’s Italian Grill on Main St. in Rochester, N.H., before crossing the street, bursting into the office and telling the seven people inside to hit the floor because he had a bomb.

“I had what I called my last supper. I had a rum and Coke and spaghetti and sausage,” Eisenberg told the Daily News Tuesday in an exclusive interview.

…

He ordered the other four to lie on the floor in the back room, he said, “because if there’s any shots fired, they’re going to be shot at me, not at you.”

And then, he said, he waited to die.

“I didn’t surrender,” said Eisenberg, 46, of Somersworth, N.H., adding that he hoped police would kill him in the standoff.

“I knew once the last hostage went out the door, there would be no reason for them to have restraint. I could see the sharp-shooter. He was all dressed in camouflage, and he had one of those laser lights on his rifle.

“I didn’t have my hands up or nothing. I just walked toward the door, thinking, ‘This is it, he’ll take me out.’ So I swing the door open, and he still didn’t shoot me, and I’m like, ‘What do I gotta do here?’

“My intent was never to hurt anyone. My intent was actually almost like a suicide by cop,” he said. “But I wanted to make a message first.”

Leeland Isenberg clearly underestimated the professionalism and the training of the law enforcment personnel on the scene. However, the most interesting thing he says isn’t that he wanted the cops to shoot him. Isenberg wanted to make a statement. What statement is that?

“I just snapped,” he said. “I kept hearing these voices saying to me that I need to sacrifice myself to make a statement for mental health for everybody, to bring this issue to the forefront,” he said.

…

“There’s this rational side that says, ‘This is crazy. This is nuts.’ But then there’s a voice that overrides it that tells me this is what I need to do. I need to make an example of myself. I can’t be allowed to be a victim anymore.”

Leeland Isenberg believes he’s a victim. Isenberg’s family says that he would have sought treatment for alcoholism, but he lacked the money or insurance to pay for it. He’s a victim of the capitalist system and he went to the only place he thought he could bring attention to the cause: Hillary Clinton’s campaign office.
Apparently he found individuals of like mind there because his captives are now saying that Leeland Isenberg is exactly the type of person they’re trying to help.
From Foster’s Daily Democrat:

“In fact, it’s the opposite,” Graeme said. “I think this has galvanized us. We’re in the state, we’re in Rochester, to do something that we’re all passionate about, and that’s to help change the system for the better.”

In some ways, Friday’s standoff illustrated the issues they said they’re trying to improve.

“The experience that we’ve gone through has been a real challenging experience for us, but it’s also served as, I don’t know, somewhat of a rallying cry,” Graeme said. “We want to move forward. We want to make sure that we’re helping people in this state, and it’s clear that there’s people in crisis in this state.”

…

“And when we get down to it, we had a man in our office on Friday who was emphatic about what was going on for him. That had terrorizing ramifications for us, and it was scary and it was terrible. But we’re not un-used to talking to people who are in that state. We were ready to listen and to deal. That’s not to say we weren’t victimized and scared.”

Asked how they feel about Eisenberg — are they angry at him, or sad for him? — Morgan said the trio’s time with the campaign helped them understand Eisenberg’s state.

“It’s a very complicated situation,” she said, and “we certainly, at the time, understood the complexity of the cycle of the system that he had gone through. And I think that so much of what we do is fight for that change, and because of that we felt…”

The principals in this story don’t believe that Isenberg is responsible for his own actions. Not his ex-wife, not his stepchildren, not Isenberg himself and certainly not his captives. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that this was some kind of “Stockholm Syndrome,” but I know it isn’t. The Isenberg drama doesn’t illustrate the failings of the mental health system in this country. Leeland Isenberg is a prime example of the failures of liberalism, pure and simple.
Let’s face it: anyone who wants treatement for any malady–mental or medical–can get it and, often times, they don’t even have to pay for it. All this man had to do was to actually seek the treatment out. If he couldn’t do it, his family could have helped or even a friend. Perhaps even a co-worker. He could have gotten the help he felt he needed instead of waiting for the Government “nanny state” to find him and give it to him.
That isn’t the way it worked out, though, is it?
Ultimately, Leeland Isenberg is getting what he wanted in a sense. He’s become the poster child for mental health in New Hampshire. The only thing he didn’t get was the martyrdom that he so desperately craved. Instead, he’ll finally get some of the treatment he and his family feel the system failed him on–and all at the expense of Granite Staters like my Mom, my sister and me.
Now I know why people buy road flares and tape them to their chest. I don’t condone it, but I definitely understand it.
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com