The Christian Peacemaker Teams are a small pacifist co-operative made up of Mennonites, Quakers, and suchlike. The Mennonite Disaster Service is one of the leanest, most effective and dedicated relief agencies in the country. I had occasion to partner with some MDS work camp volunteers about ten years, during some bad flooding south of here. They're the absolute salt of the earth. I have much less personal experience with Quakers, but given their admirable history of being far in advance of popular opinion on issues like abolition and civil rights, they always rate a fair hearing from me.
So, if you don't know your peace activists, trust me: these aren't your stereotypical tenured revolucionarios.
Yet all assertions of moral superiority on their part in the present war against the Islamic Jihad must be soberly and firmly rejected. In addition to their many good points, activists like these also have a long history of being resoundingly wrong about the foreign tyrannies America has had to fight this past century. It's the same in this war, as the peace 'n' justice crowd proves themselves unable to re-adjust their worldviews away from the idea of America as the Omni-Oppressor, and of anyone foreign and filled with hatred of the West as in the right by default.
Christian Peacemaker Teams does not acknowledge that U.S. and British forces rescued the men.
In a statement, the group says, "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."
Rather a short memory they've got, there. (And did you ever notice how leftists' "root causes" are never "rooted" in anything so fundamental as good or evil?) Seems like it was only yesterday that Iraqi children were dying by the thousands every month, due to the Oil For Palaces sanctions.
V. S. Naipaul, though here talking about 9/11, put his finger precisely on the peaceniks' confusion about our jihadist enemies:
I think people have spoken much rubbish about that event. The poor revenging themselves on the rich! It's nothing but an aspect of religious hatred. And that is so hard to deal with, or even contemplate. You can deal with the poor striking out, but you can't deal with the threat of a universal religious war.
The Christian peace activists' reward in heaven may be very great. But their activities may hasten all of our arrivals there, if they get their way.
I have a very dear friend who was a conscientious objector in World War II. He is also a Jew, which makes it even weirder. The government sent him to do some kind of agricultural work during the war. He and his family disagree with me on everything political, but they are good people.
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