R D Rickster,
Saying you've spent some time in the Middle East and it's more dangerous than New York is completely meaningless - it's just a geographical area. Akin to saying there can't possibly be any mountains in Europe, because you've spent some time in Holland and never saw any!
The Middle East is a large geographical area, encompassing many countries, some pretty dangerous and violent places and some, like the United Arab Emirates decidedly not so. Airtoday was just telling it like it is about one country there - UAE which even a simple search on Google will reveal to be a considerably safer place in terms of personal safety than New York (and most major American cities). I don't think he's wearing rose coloured spectacles at all. It may not be the best place on earth to be, and his company certainly isn't paying great wages, but I felt a great deal safer when I was in Dubai than when I was in Houston.
If anyone has already accepted employment in an overseas country, unless something pretty serious has happened there to completely change their mind since they started investigating how it would be to work in a country like that, it's pretty unprofessional to pull out at the last minute. Presumably these individuals had done some homework, thought about personal safety issues before applying and knew what the pay was when they accepted.