No Thanks

Some people get the Stockholm Syndrome after long days or months of being held captive. Christian Peacemaker Teams members apparently had the malady before they ever got to Iraq. After a multinational military team rescued three CPT workers the other day, CPT neither acknowledged the heroism and risk it took to free them, nor even gave thanks.

Apparently the United States remains the root of all evil in Iraq, even that perpetrated by the Islamic extremists who kidnapped them and murdered Tom Fox, one of their companions. Of course, how CPT explains the rape rooms, the mass graves, and the killing of thousands every month while Saddam was in power as a product of U.S. hegemony I have no idea. Facts don't matter when your mind is already made up.

I salute the bravery of CPT members, who are willing to put their lives on the line in the service of peace as they understand it. I only wish they had the wisdom to go with it.

Update:
Last night CPT released a statement on its website indeed thanking those who released its workers.

Addenda
23 March 2006, 9 p.m. ET
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.