Posted on 03/25/2006 4:17:02 AM PST by Clive
It is wonderful news that three members of what are known as Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), two of them Canadian, were freed in Iraq this week after being held hostage since before Christmas. Yet some questions certainly need to be asked.
What, for example, were these men doing there in the first place? They were warned of the dangers -- more than 400 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq and 55 of them murdered.
Nor do they seem to have achieved anything of importance. This immoral war is more brutal than ever and there is no peace in the specific area where they lived.
It's been argued that Muslim leaders called for their release and that this proves that bridges were built.
Not at all. It's easy to speak up for those who are on your side and can be used as propaganda tools. Much harder, and more a test of character, to champion your enemies. We need to ask why the same Muslim leaders have not cried out for other hostages, most of them harmless and good men and women.
What these men did accomplish was to occupy the time and resources of numerous politicians, civil servants, aid workers and soldiers. Time and resources that could and should have been spent on other people who were in trouble.
Time and resources that could have gone towards helping Iraqis, 10-20 of whom are kidnapped every day, but about whom we read and hear very little because they are not Western, middle-class and privileged.
And here surely is the point. These men were there, perhaps with noble intentions, because they could go there. Not so when Saddam was murdering Kurds or Syria wiping out villages. Because if well-meaning yet colossally naive Westerners had done so they would have been killed without a second thought.
Such "peacemakers" tend to be highly selective in where they choose to make peace.
The hostages and their organization also insisted that no force should be used in their rescue. Indeed, the leaders of the group now seem be showing a staggering lack of grace and gratitude toward those who liberated their friends.
Rude and selfish. Citizens have rights and governments have responsibilities. If terrorists thought that Canadians were easy victims and may not be rescued, it would make other Canadians obvious targets for kidnap. In other words, the obsession of a handful would endanger the majority.
In my view, the fetish for non-violence is in itself fundamentally un-Christian. It is entirely Christian, for example, to use force to stop a murderer or controlled violence to prevent a rape.
Also Christian, one would have thought, to take a whip to moneychangers in the Jerusalem temple! As opposed to the "long-term friend of the CPT" who wrote to me recently (the following is an actual e-mail):
"I'm a wiccan. We are all struggling to re-kickstart the protest movement in T.O. in the face of rampant apathy, rampant sexism, rampant plutocracy, no f---ing, no fun.
"Did you ever meet Ken Q.? He came to ACT for Disarmament demonstrations in a pink bloody tutu. Now that's my kind of man. (He's retired to a small island on the West Coast now.) Pax, and all that sh--, Smokey." Quite so.
Some of us, fools that we are, would never have the time to travel to Iraq and make political statements. We're too busy paying the rent, raising our children, caring for aging parents and other such banal and apparently unnecessary tasks.
Oh, and paying taxes so that our diplomats and soldiers can help rescue people who really should know better.
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These are partisans, posing as peacemakers, trying to lead the way by self-righteous deeds. Fools through and through. After all, what did they accomplish?
When terrorist sympathizers (a.k.a. "peace activists") go to Iraq to give aid and comfort to the enemies of civilization and get captured by their terrorist friends, they should be left to the tender mercies of those friends.
I had read that these so called "peacemakers" were a bunch of ingrates to their rescuers.Instead of peace they didn't accomlish anything but stir up trouble.Reagen would have told them to stay the hell out or they would be on their own.They can end up like the dumb bitch who got flattened by the bulldozer for all I care for being idiots.
Check out the last 4 paragraphs...
These guys are political activists, not PEACE activists. One of them was pictured with a sign that "Israel equaled apartheid". No one who is interested in PEACE would stand in the middle east with such a sign. These guys are provocateurs and have nothing to do with peace (or Christianity for that matter).
No statement from the dead guy?
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