CPT Update

Ben came back from the North yesterday, so we met up and grabbed a burger and a beer, which was a lot of fun. He’s heading to Accra tomorrow and back to Canada on Sunday. Apart from a bit of work in the morning, that took up most of my day, so not much to report, except that it’s too bad Ben is leaving.

Following an email I received, I would like to make a small mea culpa. The Christian Peacemaker Teams came out with a statement thanking the rescuers of their members. Here it is:

We have been so overwhelmed and overjoyed to have Jim, Harmeet and Norman freed, that we have not adequately thanked the people involved with freeing them, nor remembered those still in captivity. So we offer these paragraphs as the first of several addenda:

We are grateful to the soldiers who risked their lives to free Jim, Norman and Harmeet. As peacemakers who hold firm to our commitment to nonviolence, we are also deeply grateful that they fired no shots to free our colleagues. We are thankful to all the people who gave of themselves sacrificially to free Jim, Norman, Harmeet and Tom over the last four months, and those supporters who prayed and wept for our brothers in captivity, for their loved ones and for us, their co-workers.

Good for them for thanking those who risked their lives to free them. They did show gratitude, so I retract what I said about them being ungrateful. However, I would be interested to know what their reaction would have been if shots had been fired in their rescue. Would they have been less grateful?

Furthermore, I believe that the Canadian, American, British and Iraqi governments should bill the CPT for expenses incurred during their rescue. They were warned beforehand that they should not be operating in Iraq without armed guards. (It's Tuesday and I just read that the two Canadians were somewhat uncooperative while being debriefed. Who the hell are they "aiding" by withholding information that could help coalition forces stop further incidents like this from happening?)

Lest anyone accuse me of being a total heartless jerk, I do want to reiterate that I am extremely happy that these three men were rescued unharmed, unlike too many other innocent people, both Iraqi and foreign, who have fallen into the hands of these barbarians.

Finally, I want to close with a short poem, written in the early 20^th century by Hillaire Belloc:

Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight
But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.