Neither Holy, nor Roman, nor Empire
The Christian Peacemaker Teams are refusing to cooperate with authorities seeking information about their kidnappers. According to the Daily Telegraph:
The three peace activists freed by an SAS-led coalition force after being held hostage in Iraq for four months refused to co-operate fully with an intelligence unit sent to debrief them, a security source claimed yesterday. The claim has infuriated those searching for other hostages.
However, one of the former CPT hostages, Briton Norman Kemper "is understood to have given some helpful information. He provided details of the semi-rural area north-west of Baghdad where he was held and confirmed that his captors were criminals, rather than insurgents. Their motive was believed to be money."
The refusal was anticipated in a Belmont Club post called The Widows Mite. "They have forbidden any attempts to visit retribution and justice upon their captors. And if they know anything more about this criminal gang they are unlikely to share it with the Coalition" though Mr. Kemper has apparently cooperated to some extent. One of the hostages refusing to cooperate, Mr. James Loney, had characterized his captors as "criminals" according to the BBC. Those criminals had previously tortured and murdered their co-hostage Tom Fox.
Update
ABC News -- Details Released on Iraq Hostages' Ordeal
Peggy Gish, a member of the Chicago-based group for which the former hostages worked in Baghdad, said the men were bound and their captors left the building "right before the intervention."
However, prior to the "the intervention" things were not quite so bad.
Gish said the captives were not always bound during their captivity and were allowed to exercise regularly. The kidnappers provided medication for Kember, who had an undisclosed health problem. She said the three appeared physically fit despite their long captivity. "We do not know of any specific maladies, any particular illnesses, as a result," she said. "Even Norman (Kember) seemed fairly strong for what he had gone through."
Gish said the captives never learned why they were kidnapped or who their captors were. "Our team has never received any direct communication with them," she said of the captors, adding that no ransom was demanded or paid.
Gish also said she did not know why Fox was killed. "He was the only American," Gish said. "I don't know if that's the reason."
[Why did James Loney characterize his captors as "criminals" or Norman Kemper call them "criminals rather than insurgents" whose "motive was believed to be money" if "the captives never learned why they were kidnapped or who their captors were"? Although the captives were "not always bound during their captivity and were allowed to exercise regularly" they never learned a thing about why Tom Fox was killed. Did they bother to ask? Why would Fox be singled out as "the only American" if the captors were criminals interested only in money? Or are they now not sure?]
Commentary
This is an interesting illustration of how far uncritical antiwar sentiment will bend even the most basic ethical standards. The Christian Peacemaker Teams said in a statement issued after the hostages' rescue that:
We believe that the illegal occupation of Iraq by Multinational Forces is the root cause of the insecurity which led to this kidnapping and so much pain and suffering in Iraq. The occupation must end.
Illegal. Does this include the "illegal" occupation of Iraq by the Iraqi Transitional Government? Has the CPT unilaterally repealed unanimously adopted UN Security Council Resolution 1546 providing for an temporary Iraqi government until a full one should be formed, but which in the meantime is regarded as having sovereign attributes? Will the CPT cooperate with police authorities from the full Iraqi government after it is constituted in the coming weeks? Or is their concept of legality superior to all of these? And in any case, if the kidnappers were according to the CPT itself composed of "criminals, rather than insurgents", whose "motive was believed to be money", and who for that money tortured and killed Tom Fox, how does the CPT's 'principled' refusal to cooperate differ in any way from a conscious decision to shield an ordinary murderer from the police? How is that different from being an accomplice after the fact? How different from covering up for the Mafia or the Crips?
Though CPT liberally uses the words "illegal" and "Christian" to justify its actions one wonders whether they have the slightest conception of the words. Or the slightest regard for Tom Fox.
posted by wretchardthecat at 3/24/2006 05:57:00 PM
49 Comments:
"Illegal" is just another word that means whatever you want it to mean, in Wonderland, on the far side of the looking glass.
Wretchard,
In the 1960's a psychiatrist, Hervey Cleckley, wrote a book which has become justly famous as perhaps the best work available on the psychology of the psychopath:
http://www.cassiopaea.com/cassiopaea/psychopath.htm
"The Mask of Sanity." He describes how the key deficit in the psychopath (we now usually call these people "sociopaths") is a failure of empathy and the absence of a conscience.
These CPT "Christians" certainly aren't psychopaths, but in an odd way their "ethics" and "morality" blind them, and make them behave in a way that is potentially just as evil.
Jamie Irons
Make a person wonder what these folk thought of Mr Tookie Williams, before he OD'd on that spike of prison juice last December.
Tookie & Tom,
brothers in defiance of the Man
Perhaps in future, if CPT members are captured and our forces find them without hostage takers around, we should just back out and leave them there. That way, we won't be "illegally" interfering in the "sovereign rights" of the criminals to kidnap and kill whomever they please. As long as it's CPT people.
I was hopeful for their safe rescue right up until it happened, and now I'm just ashamed that they are my countrymen, because it is obvious that they are moral infants at best, and that they love everyone who hates my country.
Imagine if one or more of our soldiers were killed in rescuing these people? I tremble at the thought of what CPT would have said, then.
Jamie, I think you're right ab/ the mental illness. For example, how can a philosophy built on victimology embrace a Tookie, unless it's just plain nutz ???
I dig the TRIPLE Linda-Richmanism for the title.
Linda Richman was a Mike Myers character on SNL. Other examples (source: Wikipedia).
"The radical reconstruction of the south after the Civil War was neither radical nor a reconstruction. Discuss."
"A peanut is neither a pea nor a nut. Discuss."
The Prince of Tides was neither about princes nor tides. Discuss."
"Duran Duran was neither Duran nor Duran. Discuss."
Fornow,
The title is from Voltaire who said that the Holy Roman Empire was 'neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire'. But I like your versions.
Oops! I guess both you & Mike Myers are better read than I am. (slinking away)
"root cause was neither a root, nor a cause
Discuss."
It's not about roots, causes, or Tom:
Always just me, and me.
or as Jamie writes:
"A failure of empathy and the absence of a conscience."
fornow,
I knew what W said, but thought I'd make you feel better.
Events these past few years will give you feelings you never imagined you might have. I was left thinking how glad I was that they sawed off a CPTer's head and not US soldier.
"how does the CPT's 'principled' refusal to cooperate differ in any way from a conscious decision to shield an ordinary murderer from the police?"
---
Wouldn't bringing in the Police be wrong by their higher standard, anyway, since Police resort to force, and punishment, and other such illegal acts.
In the future, captives that are neither in the military nor supporting civilians should be left to the discretion of their captors. If the captive is a member of CPT, we need to sing them a hymn....:" Hymn, hymn,...... f*** Him."
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
CPTers getting themselves shot up do add a new meaning to "holier than thou".
Oh, I feel fine, thanks. Once every eon or so I must submit to my comeuppance.
Interestingly, actual sociopaths have in the past had key fighting roles as "natural killers" in the U.S. military as in others. Most people don't like to kill and this reluctance has been significant on the battlefield.
Bottom line is, sociopaths need "highly structured environments." People whose moral vanity turns them into something like sociopaths perhaps need some prolonged exposure to highly chaotic environments.
Nice post (as usual...!)
Dr. Sanity had a good explanation on her blog about why a kidnapped victim comes to identifiy with their captor.
Of course in this case the victim had already sort of joined the kidnapper's side before they were kidnapped!
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2006/01/identification-with-aggressor.html
These people are so selective in what they criticize that it is fair to say that they are neither Christian nor peacemakers.
Who was that Roman sage who commented:
"The Roman State depends upon its laws, and its manliness."
After the disgusting revelation of their ex-captive's refusal to cooperate with their liberators, we must know that indeed, among the CPT, there stands no Roman.
For without law, what would they have?
***
Maybe this is one reason why they seem to cling so desperately to legalities.
But obedience to the Law is a voluntary trait of a free citizenry.
Logically, strengthening respect for the Law means cultivating Citizens...
...but again and again, I find myself searching for some sign that folks like the CPT stand *for* something, apart standing *against* this or that.
It's a sad surrender to the Universe, where all things are equal, no one is more right or wrong than any other, and we can't do anything about anything anyway.
These people seem to believe that random non-action against known enemies is a healthy response. In any biological model, this weak surrender leads to extinction.
But as was pointed out in the earlier thread, they, like the Palestinians, depend upon a Deus ex Machina to come in and preserve them.
------------
It's time to ignore the polls, there's a war going on, we gotta go balls to the wall until 2008, and let the next Administration deal with the pieces on the board at that time. While we have the chance, we have to pursue a bold game plan.
Turning the other cheek to an attack on yourself is meek.
Turning the other cheek to an attack on your fellow (Tom Green) is weak.
Turning the other cheek to future attacks on others by refusing to inform the legitmate authorities on the activities of common criminals who just murdered your fellow is narcisstic and evil.
Pride is a mortal sin, CPT.
They obey no law other than that of their moral vanity. It is appalling the injustice that is perpetrated in the service of such vanity. This is an example of how the perfect--here the ideal of non-violence and pacifism--is the enemy of the good.
Yusef,
When the Abu Sayyaf took European hostages at a resort in Malaysia large ransoms were paid for their release. The amounts were so large that the foreign currency exchange rates in Sulu and Basilan were temporarily depressed. All the hostage negotiators congratulated themselves. But the ransoms were eventually used to buy guns which were subsequently used for further abductions, including schoolchildren and a dive resort in Palawan, leading to the death of Martin Burnham, and others too numerous for me to recall.
Similarly, the cost of the CPT's pacifism is simply going to be borne by somebody else. They refuse to cooperate with the authorities to find the kidnappers and strike a noble pose. Very well; someone else gets stuffed in a trunk down the track by the kidnapper they were beneath tracking down. The public relations benefits of the supposed pacifism fully accrue to the CPT, but the bill was only partly paid by Tom Fox. The balance will be paid in due course by someone else, though I am churlish to mention it.
Why are these people still holding Western Passports and Citizenship? Both should be revoked. These people should be made to suffer the full consequences and predation of the world they created for themselves.
"Does this raise alarm bells with anybody else?"
As luck would have it, the bells toll for thee and we, not the CPT.
Something stinks, must be the peels of the CPT.
Manipulation of others, putting others' lives in danger, to further one's vanity is morally reprehensible. Doing so in the name of the Lord of Hosts is unholy.
It is akin to the Jihadi who murders God's children in the name of Allah.
The stench will remain in God's nostril 'till their day of judgment.
Incidents like this and the Bulldozer Girl show how willing the Left is to cooperate with Islamists. These people are not "peace activists". They are enemy agents. The only peace they want is what comes after the surrender of the US and the Brits.
Dissent is highly valued in the West but one of these days we have to start distinguishing between dissent and sedition. Lincoln would have had Reid and Durbin in jail months ago.
PeterUK,
Are the CPT antiwar or are they on the other side? By their reasoning Saddam should still be in power and free to do whatever he pleased. Maybe they can take over for Ramsey Clark.
Just was watching the MSM, i swear it's a completely different story...
Andy Warhol's 15 minutes isn't quite what he predicted. It's not the person who's famous, it's a construct with the person as mere signifier.
Many terrorists are merely criminals. Many activists are just nut jobs (showtime, at http://zombietime.com).
That's not a naive rhetorical exercise in opprobrium, it's simply true. But the press seems to forget it. Common criminals and wack citizens don't up ratings or increase circulation. Terrorists and noble human interest stories do, though.
So the criminals' and the nuts' 15 minutes of fame, like the fame accorded other popular icons, is not the light they own but the peculiar light that's shined on them by the "mainstream paparazzi."
In the end, distinctions are not respected between the nuts and the noble, between violent ideologues and merest miscreants. And this is the same press that smugly speaks of themselves as fulfilling "the public's right to 'know'."
As a new day dawns over the AZ deserts I realize that this is a bit off the topic of Mr Fox and his associates, but...
Over at Westhawk the guys have come up with a great thread, with a link to one of W's past threads "a place like many others", and they call it "War on Terror 2.0".
I like it, so some here will as well, while others may think it sedition to even mention another Course.
" ... If the U.S. public and policy-makers had already been in the WOT 2.0 frame of mind in 2001, how would the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq differed? The initial stages of the Afghan campaign would have been the same. However, under the “anarchy rules” of WOT 2.0, the U.S. would have recruited Northern Alliance tribes interested in revenge against Pushtun tribes in the south and east. With tribal wars, there would have been no recognition of the Afghan-Pakistan frontier; U.S.-supported tribes would have gone where necessary to eliminate Al Qaeda sanctuaries. Pakistan-based Taliban tribes are presently using this same approach from east to west. U.S.-backed forces would have used it from west to east. ... "
As buddy said earlier, right out of late '50's Democratic Policy Playbook on defeating Communism.
The CPT's web site briefly treats the history of the movement, and apparently Ron Sider's speaking of Christian martyrdom struck a chord with some:
"Unless we . . . are ready to start to die by the thousands in dramatic vigorous new exploits for peace and justice, we should sadly confess that we never really meant what we said . . . ."
At the risk of sounding callous, it's seeming to me that only one of the captives really meant what he said. The others are grateful for their release.
These folks got pumped up to die for a cause, if necessary. But they found God expected less -- be a random captive of thugs.
beMs Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes in the IHT of:
Women go 'missing' by the millions
" ... The Islamists are engaged in reviving and spreading a brutal and retrograde body of laws. Wherever the Islamists implement Shariah, or Islamic law, women are hounded from the public arena, denied education and forced into a life of domestic slavery.
Cultural and moral relativists sap our sense of moral outrage by claiming that human rights are a Western invention. Men who abuse women rarely fail to use the vocabulary the relativists have provided them. They claim the right to adhere to an alternative set of values - an "Asian," "African" or "Islamic" approach to human rights.
This mind-set needs to be broken. A culture that carves the genitals of young girls, hobbles their minds and justifies their physical oppression is not equal to a culture that believes women have the same rights as men.
(Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Dutch legislator, lives under 24-hour protection because of death threats against her by Islamic radicals since the murder of Theo van Gogh, with whom she made the film "Submission" about women and Islam. This Global Viewpoint article was distributed by Tribune Media Services.)
There is much, much more there.
So there is more at stake in Mr Rahman's case than just Mr Rahman.
Should Afghanistan's women be returned to living in a Mohammedan Hell, rather than attempt further reforms if Mr Rahman is martyred?
Should we abandon Iraq if Mr al-Sadr gains more power, not less, through democratic means?
PeterUK,
Thanks. I went to the CPT website--yikes! They are also anti-Israel. This is just a sample of the stuff. Israel must serve an important purpose for the US in the Mid East--perhaps oil accessibility. and Hamas is a religious renewal movement in Islam that was initially supported by Israel as a way to balance Fatah. Hamas also has major social service programs in the refugee camps. There is a small military wing of Hamas.
CPT has "missions" all over the place with notable exceptions including: no programs in North Korea, Iran, Venezuella, etc. If China tries to invade Taiwan, I'm sure we'll see everything but CPT volunteers.
"...fiddle with their autonomy" --that's some great phraseology, Trish--
O/T for the historians, VDHanson picks some great books over @ WSJ. Over the years I've read four of 'em--which was a little shocking to me upon seeing the professor's list.
[[Recommend any young folks who can't tolerate offices and want to see the world, be a drilling fluid tech--you get to sit in galleys and read most of the time, as long as the drilling fluid is okay your time is your own. You're stuck on the rig for weeks or months at a time, and once you know your job there's nothing to do but read, read, read. And fish, and play chess and poker, but mainly read. If I was ten years younger I'd go back to it it tomorrow. And re-read Hanson's list, first-off.]]
\:-)
Man, posted in the Google News, here's a plot-thickener--now the CPT is accusing the military of falsifying their non-gratitude for the rescue.
The CPT's hatred of Israel & all things western reveals their true ID's. They are extreme left wing socialist/communist thugs posing as Christians.
rasqual said: "Many terrorists are
merely criminals."
Yes, they are, but they commit their crimes, as do CPT operatives, in the name of a religion - one they obviously have hijacked for their own sociapathic ends. Religious leaders who give cover to such as these should become martyrs. This Afghan "cleric" who says that, if the Christian convert there is released, the Afghan people will tear him apart would be tops on my list. He & that Sadr character.
Silencing the mad Mullahs needs to become a priority.
Peter, re 'apologist for the Soviet Union' -- why am I not surprised?
...after all, it's clear that God loves a well-run gulag.
When you find a Communist and a Christian on the same side of the barricade, one of 'em ain't what he says he is.
Even Joos get the Blues - and REDS: - - - Labour's disgrace; Blair's apology »
---
And Self Loathing: - - - « Jazz and the anti-Jew
---
But I give up:
WHAT is the CND?
Nick Cohen on The Da Vinci Code, Intellectual Copyrights, The Freedom to be Stupid, and Darfur.
The Islamists in Khartoum are threatening to set al-Qaeda on the UN if it sends in its own troops. Meanwhile, Sudan is aiding rebel forces in Chad and Chad is aiding rebel forces in the Sudan. War between the two countries is a possibility.
We cannot bolt the gates of Fortress Europe and pretend the crisis has nothing to do with us. We ought to have learned by now that the people smugglers will bring in asylum seekers and, with them, new racial tensions.
We should also know that the ability of Sudan’s rulers to get away with promoting terrorism could lead to Islamist attacks on the ‘far enemy’ in Europe as well as targets in their backyard.
'Rat:
The put down was:
Those racists that don't think the muzzies are ready for Democracy.
---
What LABEL shall we give those that don't mind the slaughter of women and those of other faiths as long as it's done in a proper Democratic Atmosphere?
Thanks, Whit.
I do not know what we could call them, doug.
There is the irony though, even here the call goes out, as peterboston said, for the Western Civilization to Stand United against the horde.
But not in Darfur.
Stand together in some other unnamed locale.
Safer, easier, less risky.
Not Paris, leave that to the French.
Not Madrid, the Spanish already abandoned ship.
Then the call goes out.
Stand togegther in abandoning Afghanistan.
Because the Law of Afghanistan has not caught up to the 21st century, abandon it to the 7th.
The "to Hell with Them" Hawks that Rich Lowry spoke of, a group whose ranks is growing.
Not to the benefit of Mr Bush's Policies.
"Thanks. I went to the CPT website--yikes! They are also anti-Israel. This is just a sample of the stuff. Israel must serve an important purpose for the US in the Mid East--perhaps oil accessibility. and Hamas is a religious renewal movement in Islam that was initially supported by Israel as a way to balance Fatah. Hamas also has major social service programs in the refugee camps. There is a small military wing of Hamas."
Paraphrased: For oil, the US supports the one country in the Middle East without oil against all the others.
Braindead.
trish:
true that many Sunni and Shia individuals are standing shoulder to shoulder with our best. These are not the Jihadis. They stand between the innocent and the evil, mad mullahs of the ME.
Any mullah, cleric, etc that calls for manifest jihad should be arrested on the spot. They are the killers in this war.
Beaten Wife Syndrome.
Normalization of deviancy.
Its always the same thing, with mustard or caramel.
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