Doomed Are The Peacemakers

The kidnappers who seized two Canadian hostages in Iraq have threatened to kill them by next Thursday if their demands for the release of their detained fellow terrorists and insurgents in Iraq aren't met.

Their demands aren't surprising. What is surprising the fatuousness of the response from the organization they're working for:

In Baghdad, Greg Rollins, a Canadian member of Christian Peacemaker Teams, called the news disturbing.

"It's a bit of a shock," Rollins said in an interview minutes after hearing about the threat made against his colleagues.

Rollins, who had not yet seen the video footage, said he had hoped the kidnappers would respond to messages of support from Muslims and other Arabs for the group, which opposes the invasion of Iraq.

"Hopefully they will continue to read those things and get a positive idea of what we do here and who my teammates are."

And what have the Christian Peacemaker Teams been doing in Iraq? Running a Foster Parents Plan for terrorists!

After a year and a half of coordinated advocacy for Iraqis detained by U.S. and other occupying forces, Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) is ending its Adopt-a-Detainee Letter-Writing Campaign. CPT's Iraq project will, however, continue to monitor the situation of Iraqis captured by the Multinational Force in Iraq (MNF) and by the new Iraqi Forces.

The Adopt-a-Detainee Letter-Writing Campaign, beginning in March 2004, matched individual detainees with congregations, mosques, synagogues, and peace groups in North America and around the world. These groups wrote letters to U.S., Iraqi and other relevant officials on the detainees' behalf. The campaign grew out of CPT's investigation of and reporting on abuses within the U.S.-run detention system in Iraq during the fall of 2003. The Adopt-a-Detainee Letter-Writing Campaign included a total of twenty-seven detainees, nine of whom U.S. officials released during the campaign, ten of whom were still detained at last word, and seven of whom U.S. officials never confirmed as detained (i.e., the "disappeared.")

....

Since the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis in June 2004, CPT has experienced U.S. officials in Iraq becoming increasingly unresponsive to appeals for reform, both from team members on location in Iraq and from letter-writers abroad.

Perhaps the Iraqi government doesn't want a bunch of naive do-gooders sticking their noses in places where they don't belong? They know who they're dealing with, and what they're capable of. The Christian Peacemakers, until now, didn't. And they still don't.

The Christian Peacemakers' concern for the human rights of the detained insurgents and terrorists is touching, but it will not move their captors to release them, let alone beat their swords into ploughshares. Their abductors will complain about human rights abuses when it suits them, to win the support of Western public opinion and undermine the forces of liberation and freedom. But their mission remains unchanged: to slay the infidel where they find him, and destroy all his works, including such un-Islamic concepts as human rights.

Naive though the Christian Peacemakers may be, they are not entirely unconcerned for their own safety: a quick look at their website reveals that they prefer to "get in the way" where there are civilized nations' armies and police to get in their way if something goes wrong. They certainly were nowhere to be found when their services were most needed in Iraq, when Saddam Hussein was gassing Kurds and running dissidents through wood chippers.

All that's left for these men is to bear witness as true Christian martyrs. If they understand the concept of Christian marytrdom.

Source: National Post