By now most people are aware that 33-year-old Canadian peace activist Harmeet Singh Sooden (who celebrates his birthday today), along with another Canadian and one Brit, got their first taste of freedom in months on Thursday:
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NOW he looks like a “Gandhian peace activist.” |
The three hostages were freed Thursday from a house west of Baghdad by a joint U.S.-British military operation. The kidnappers were not there.
“Right before the intervention, they (the hostages) were bound and then their captors left their building,” said Peggy Gish, a member of the Chicago-based Christian Peacemakers Teams.
The U.S. military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, said the 8 a.m. rescue from a “kidnapping cell” was based on information divulged by a man during interrogation only three hours earlier. The man was captured by U.S. forces on Wednesday night. [Link]
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p>The operation to rescue the three hostages was led by British SAS and MI6 as detailed in an article at Canada.com:
CanWest News Service has learned the raid was prompted after the Special Air Service and MI6 — Britain’s commando unit and its spy agency — opened negotiations with a kidnapping network after studying hostage tapes released to Arab television stations. Eavesdropping teams also tried to intercept cellphone conversations between the kidnappers and Arab television journalists.
The Canadian contingent is believed to have included the elite Joint Task Force 2, who were, according to Stephen Harper, “fully engaged and fully aware of what was going on…” [Link]
Now for the controversy. If you listened to the news yesterday you probably noticed that the language used to describe this event varied greatly. Some news organizations and groups said the hostages were “released.” Others, including military officials, said that they were “freed” or “rescued.” If you’ll reacall, these three are members of Christian Peacemaker Teams who oppose the occupation of Iraq and the presence of military there. It would put them in a tough spot if they had to publicly thank the military for Thursday’s events. Using different set of words and phrases can allow these different groups (e.g. military, CPT, and journalists) to all put their own spin on the actual events. I’d like to know more about the facts.
In Toronto, CPT co-director David Pritchard described the news as “release” rather than a “rescue” throughout the day. He said the news sent CPT workers on “a roller coaster of emotions…” [Link]
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p> We will have to wait for the first direct interviews with Sooden and colleagues to see how they describe the events leading to the end of their captivity.
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p>So what did Sooden and his fellow captives do during all those months? Exactly what you hoped they be able to do:
The Canadians struggled to stay in shape during their confinement: Ms. David said Mr. Loney did stretching exercises, while Mr. Sooden did sit-ups and ran up and down a flight of stairs. [Link]
See related post: Canadian peace activists abducted (a BEFORE picture of Sooden is located in this post)
That’s rather ungracious. Seems you could cleanly separate thanking the individuals who saved your life from the larger politics.
Ironic for the CPT members to be rescued by the military… a parable comparable to the Biblical Good Samaritan story. Maybe they can learn something about being grateful for help from those they dislike.
Good Samaritan story
Was this a hostage situation or a fitness training camp?
More seriously, it’s odd that their captors weren’t there. Perhaps this was a pre-negotiated handoff rather than a snatch-and-grab rescue. I’d still thank the military if it happened to me, but it is a different thing.
Well, whether or not this turns out to be another Jessica Lynch type mission, it’s still good news!
As to the tought spot – I think that they’d just respond that CPT would have never needed to be there in the first place if it wasn’t for the war.
Hey, what happened to the news story I posted about this? I wanted to see how many interest clicks it got. 🙁
Um, I think they could thank rescuers without being hypocritical. It’s possible their families told the soldiers they didn’t want any shots fired on their behalf, and that might have had something to do with it.
Haha Saheli, mine got deleted too. I noticed later that someone beat us both to it 🙂
Happy Birthday Harmeet! A gift of freedom! Far out…..
that is why you should never take an extreme stand. nothing in life is clean cut. life is always abt irony.
if you do, you will have to bite words later 🙂
it should be pointed out that they do thank the rescuers, even if it is in an addenda. probably because they realize that comments like the above will be made. CPT Statement: CPTers Freed
The timing of the release is totally dal_mein_kala-ish. Words such as “rescue”, “Christian Peacemaker teams”, “polls”, “low-ratings”, “Dubya”, “low-morale”, “troups” suggest that either folks are milking this episode dry by lionizing something that wasn’t that funda to begin with, or Dick Cheney mistook a quail for a man for a change and shot it, making the “rescue” news a coverup for the ensuing airing of the newest Dick Cheney episode. Stay tuned folks.
Great news !!! Atleast this story came to a good end, unlike most everything coming out of Iraq. I saw on ABC’s evening news report that, one potential suicide bomber tried to kill volunteers who were in a line at a Blood Donation camp !!!! But fortunately Iraqi police figured out before the guy can detonate.
This is the kind of unreal shit the iraqis are dealing with.
Great news !!! Hope Harmeet can go on doing many meaningful humanitarion missions in his life.
happy birthday, big sweet fuzzy boy! i screamed at the telly when i saw a singh was captured. i’m soooooo glad he’s free and ok. whew. and cute too!
well, zimblymallu (#10), dont get me wrong. i am really happy no one was harmed and i admire non violence in general. therefore i don’t like the war either.
it is abt cpt, the organization (and many others like it, religious or not), who go to the extant of saying “we don’t need the soldiers to shoot on our behalf”. it is dramatic, but that is all it is. you have a halo till someone calls your bluff, which you hope will not happen.
and would cpt protest the soldiers if they shot 10 kidnappers for each person rescued? and if no soldiers were involved or if the soldiers had no guns, would the kidnappers have released the hostages? who knows? if not violence, it may have been the threat of violence that is to be thanked isn’t it?
why not just be happy with the rescue instead of trying to play jesus? why give half-hearted qualified thanks to the military by sneaking in a line in the addendum?
and “grateful no bullets were fired” is again a bluff which they hope no one will call—next time (hopefully it will not happen), will they ask soldiers to back off from any violence when their workers are kidnapped?
of course in the last comment, last para, i mean “hopefully there will be no more kidnappings”.
This kind of logic can go forever. if not for the presence of u.s soldiers there, they wouldn’t probably have been kidnapped in the first place. It is a great news that these guys are released/rescued, but i do agree that you have to give credit to whoever saved your life: in my view, that is only being grateful –
I disagree with some of you. If I’m in a dangerous situation in NYC, and a cop gets me out of the bind, I’ll be thankful/grateful to that cop, and I won’t make sweeping generalizations about cops (if I did before). But that doesn’t mean that I won’t continue to criticize the institution of police misconduct and brutality. These crimes still exist, and this injustice must be countered.
Criticizing the war and especially the detention of thousands of Iraqis does not mean that they aren’t thankful for the rescue/recovery/release (whatever). It just means that they aren’t wishy-washy about their purpose, and they recognize that they are putting their lives at risk in opposing the measures ordered by civilian war hawks interested in keeping the approval rating for the war on terror high enough so that they can continue their tactics.
I don’t have patience for over-zealous, proselytizing Christians, but I have to give it up to these folks for sticking to their conviction that this war and the methods employed by the military go too far, just like I’m gonna have to give it up to the Catholic church for speaking out against the crazy immigration legislation that may pass. The Church has shown more guts than the Senators from NY.
I think the military would get more gratefulness from these Christians in peril if they rescued them…
@brownfist, #17 one point before proceedings. my gripe with cpt is not their anti-war stance. i mentioned in my previous comment too that i myself dont like the war.
my problem is (1) like i mentioned in the previous comment, their drama. if someone saves your a$$, you should be grateful, not qualify it with moral lessons. failure to do it is just cheap. (2) another reason the drama bugs me is this—if they are anti-war, they know fully well their theaterics is not going to change a single mind who does not already agree with their anti-war stance. so what do they expect to achieve by their attitude?
what i read from them persisting with their attitude is that they are perhaps more interested in the act of protest than what they are protesting against. dont forget that stopping the war (or abu-ghraib like situations also in the cpt case) is what should be achieved, not appearing holier-than-thou.
note also that the army guy who was the whistle blower in the abu ghraib case, and the journalists who published it achieved a lot more for the anti-war case than cpt and the myriad other organizations that sent people to iraq on the eve of the war to “die with the iraqi brothers and sisters”. but people forget the whistle blower, they remember dramatic pronouncements.
they know fully well their theaterics is not going to change a single mind who does not already agree with their anti-war stance.
Um, Salt March?
salt march, the one at dandi? no one was trying to convince the british, rather it was to mobilize indians. it worked. removing taxes on salt was the excuse. don’t see a comparison with saying “maybe you saved us, but still we will only thank you a little bit and that too since you did not shoot at anyone”.
come on, what am i doing here late in the night.. in my old age i am not supposed to stay up this late :). that too on a friday.
(a BEFORE picture of Sooden is located in this post)
it’s amazing what face fuzz will do. that was a self done total makeover.
brownfist, the officers in question aren’t ALL oficers..there are some really great cops out there…but there are others who act like like those thye’re suppsoed to be defending us from. THOSE are the ones in question. WE’d all be greatful, most likely to an officer who has taken good care of us. it’s the one that go about enforcing the law I don’t have patience for over-zealous, proselytizing Christians, but I have to give it up to these folks for sticking to their conviction that this war and the methods employed by the military go too far
wow…..where exactly are these christians? all the ones i talk to are to are very pro war. often the conservative ones.
ps – abhi, where’d you find the pic of the fuzzy harmeet?
“happy birthday, big sweet fuzzy boy! i screamed at the telly when i saw a singh was captured. i’m soooooo glad he’s free and ok. whew. and cute too!”
Ugh !! I find Pattie Kaur’s line of reasoning rather obnoxious. This seems to have almost become a pattern with her: to focus singularly on the Sikh, rather than paying attention to her other non-Sikh co-nationalists who are equal victims. Let all people be treated equally, whether they be black, white, brown, yellow, red, Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Parsi, Jew, etc ….
harmeet singh sooden is the man in that picture
Marx don’t let it bother you, I just find her one-track mind amusing. However, one thing isn’t clear to me. Is he still Sikh or is Christian? Over here we’ve only heard further info on Norman Kember, the elderly Brit who was also released. Sadly not much is being said about the sole American in the four, Tom Fox, who was killed two weeks ago.
Norman Kember has come under fire for not thanking the soldiers. Everyone on TV is repeating the mantra – we’re delighted they’re safe and free, but they were foolish to go there. They’ve been likened to irresponsible potholers who rely on the emergency services to get them out. I don’t know about these sorts of analogies, but I can’t say I have a great deal of sympathy for missionaries who put themselves in stupendously dangerous situations. However, one additional point is that your president and my prime minister are repeatedly telling us Iraq is safer and progressing, so the fact this whole episode occurred is embarrassing for them too.
Ugh !! I find Pattie Kaur’s line of reasoning rather obnoxious. This seems to have almost become a pattern with her: to focus singularly on the Sikh, rather than paying attention to her other non-Sikh co-nationalists who are equal victims. Let all people be treated equally, whether they be black, white, brown, yellow, red, Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Parsi, Jew, etc ….
ughhh..i find people who can’t have a we bit of fun and relax rather obnoxious. it’s nice to know that you can boff off in my head, and assume things. um…this MAY be a shock to you, but i do. and i have many firends of all types who i give equal treatment to. i may comment on the cuteness of fuzzy singhs, but i have respect for all types of people with virtue. tom/marx/thom…..right….anyhoo, thanks bong breaker, and for that, i will make extra effort to give more credit to the other here, as long as some folks don’t try to assume thing….because you know the ol saying about assuming, and i’m really not in the mood to argue this crap.
and i had mentioned it because i was not used to seeing a singh being captured with the others…i did not mean anthing more by it. i was once christian, and i feel just as bad for them as i do him, as well as anyone else. i try not to involve myself too much in war talk, as i can’t stand the idea of it…oh, well, i’m not going to please everybody, and they just have to live with it. and if they have a problem, it’s their problem, not mine. i have a lot of my own complaints too, but we’re all human. spending time calling others obnoxious over what’s posted on a website, when don’t know ALL of their thoughts really speaks volumes. chill out.
Pattie, what are you smoking and where can I get some?
Iraqi reaction to these dimwits –
It goes on from there.
Gandhi wrote to the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, explaining his intentions: “My ambition is no less than to convert the British people through nonviolence, and thus make them see the wrong they have done to India”.
Pattie, what are you smoking and where can I get some?
sardar dhari, and ask ennis. 😉
and my muslim buddy is also giving me some fuzz. 😉
saheli, #30
well if gandhi had such ambitions i would disagree, but i would not look at the salt march negatively if he had the resources to pull it off. which he clearly did. like i pointed out before, it clearly had potential in mobilizing indians. besides, what do you expect? you will not tell a colonial viceroy “i want to mobilize a movement to throw you out” if you are half way smart. (btw cpt is fortunate in that it can say that without the same fear or repurcussions–cpt vs bush is not gandhi vs the british in several other ways too.)
but since you persist with it, 🙂 to me, the equivalent to the salt march is cpt being in iraq. if you read my comments, i dont really berate them for that. but please read on further.
paraphrasing my old comment again: i complain that (i) they are ungrateful, (ii) this ungrateful yet dramatic attitude is clearly (to me) harming the larger cause of stopping war abuses. the second point to me seems to indicate that they are more interested in appearing morally superior than stopping war abuses.
just to preempt more comparisons, gandhi (or martin luther king) would not be admired if they just made useless statements about injustice. maybe what they said was sometimes dramatic too, but useful for the greater cause. that to me makes a lot of the difference between suspicion and admiration. and let me a digress a little bit—you dont have to quote dandi march in case you dont like gandhi. he has made incredibly ridiculous statements too (just look up google). i just dont agree that the dandi march was one of them. and for the record, i largely admire gandhi.
Note of course that the government so qualified to toss around labels like dimwit and fascist is of course sincerely interested in peace. From today’s NYT:
Part of the reason may be that most victims are Sunnis, and there is growing suspicion that they were killed by Shiite death squads backed by government forces in a cycle of sectarian revenge. This allegation has been circulating in Baghdad for months, and as more Sunnis turn up dead, more people are inclined to believe it.
To bytewords and others:
More power to the folks with CPT for not losing sight of their mission. Basically, you can say “they are ungrateful” but what I think is that they realize that the victory for their 3 members is a small blip in the face of all that’s happening, including the detentions and abuses (AND MURDERS) of Iraqi citizens/civilians. I think it’s stupid to think they aren’t thankful. And I think that it’s stupid for them to miss an opportunity to make the point that much more clear that there is a lot of crazy shit happening there, and that people should wake up and think about more people than just the foreigners (or few Americans) who are caught in this hell, including the thousands who have died or been stripped of everything after the so-called liberation.
It’s specifically because these points are being ignored that they should take them up with the same or more force when they actually have some media attention. Think about it – why does the military campaign have so much news coverage, and the tremendous anti-war activism in the US and abroad just get a blip? For the undecided or unsure, the coverage endorses a particular view, and more importantly, seems to say that everyone thinks that way. Polls seem to show something else, and most don’t really know why we’re there at all. So it’s okay for the Prez to talk about “resolve” and “fighting to save our freedom” which is code for killing in the name of America – but peace activists can’t speak out on the other side? What kind of bullshit is that? And stating that just because they oppose the war, they are with the violence, or against democracy is just the same tired, stupid rhetoric of the Bushites.
Though I don’t know who the insurgents are, or whether it’s actually one coordinated group, don’t forget that that’s what they called the ghadar party and other freedom fighters in South Asia. Freedom comes in many flavors.
Pattie: You misread: I can’t take the crazy self-righteous Christians who think it’s their job to convert me (eat my fist, I reply). But these folks aren’t those. Or at least, they realize that war isn’t very spiritual, neither is torture. No matter what the theo-cons say.
When someone saves your life, it’s ungracious not to thank them. Does that even have to be spelled out?
That’s a putrid analogy. The Indian revolutionary movement didn’t focus on indiscriminately killing Indian civilians.
Mannish,
First, a more careful read would reveal that I said that it’s stupid to think they weren’t thankful. Meaning, for someone to think they were not thankful is somewhat stupid. But that they took the opportunity and the rare media attention to underline the important points that keep the organization in Iraq. If you noticed, the American military was quick to point out that the information about their whereabouts came from someone in detention – and used the attention from the media to underline their perspective that the detentions of many (i.e. the pile the hay on the haystack methodology) is working. I don’t see anyone saying “talk about poor manners, making a political statement when people’s lives were at stake! Those military people should have just kept their mouths shut and waited for their thank you’s!”
Second, seems I’ve roused your sense of morality around issues of revolution. I’m just saying that liberation movements aren’t always characterized as such by oppressors (look at Viet Nam, the Brit perspective on the United States, etc). And hell, making hundreds of thousands of unarmed peasants walk towards British weapons to satisfy someone’s experiments with truth and “non-violent” struggle should not be free from critical analysis either. How much of the strategy revolved around Gandhi’s using his cult of personality to mobilize people towards sure death? And is that fully ethically divorced from other, more violent struggle or tactics? I don’t think it’s so black and white.
Pattie: You misread: I can’t take the crazy self-righteous Christians who think it’s their job to convert me (eat my fist, I reply). But these folks aren’t those. Or at least, they realize that war isn’t very spiritual, neither is torture. No matter what the theo-cons say.
ok……..now i’m on the same page….yes, those types i cheer on myself (though to clarify for some, they don’t have to be christian either, they can be of any faith with that idea) 😉
Perhaps I wasn’t clear: it’s stupid to not say thank you explicitly in their first public statement. Thinking isn’t the same as doing.
Disagree, I still think it’s horrific to equate the Salt March with blowing up Iraqi civilians.
Wild, not only are they not thankful towards their rescuers, they seem to be making sure they don’t ‘accidentally’ help rescue others –
Lovely folks, these anti-war activists are – Eloi‘s truly far ahead of their time.
Yeah – Get your war on.
Yeah – let’s blame anti-war activists for the ills in Iraq. And let’s call up Miss Manners to rat them out for not saying “thank you” with a nice curtsy.
Hehe Brownfist. I give vinod the benefit of the doubt when he says: “Lovely folks, these anti-war activists are”
I assume he means THESE anti-war activists. They do indeed seem like silly people. However, when read in isolation:
Yeah, can you believe them? Wanting peace, the motherfuckers.
Yes, hate on the anti-war activisits. Say whatever you want to and call the dimwits if you like. They can’t be any worse than the deluded megalomaniacs who started this war, and think that if you keep talking as though things in Iraq are going well, they will start going well.
… in any case, let’s wait to see what the whole story regarding the rescue/release is before making a judement.
on another note, if you’re a Christian, shouldn’t you read things like the Sermon on the Mount and be all bout it bout on what Jesus would do right about now?
This wounded marine’s gesture probably summarizes what the soldiers involved in the mission think of the CPT rescuees.
Whoa, whoa whoa Manish–as bytewords accurately points out (I did not read their comment before I posted my second bit) I misunderstood his previous comment and thought that by “theatrics” he meant the very concept of Christian Peacemaking Team. I am certainly not equating the Salt March with insurgents–which seems totally out of left field–nor am I even equating it with their alleged behavior now, though I am a bit skeptical that it is being blown out of proportion and would like to know more about the whole situation. I simply wanted to say that the concept of nonviolent “theatrics” which leave one vulnerable to violence is a valid method to attempt to change an opponents’ mind, and people should not be judged stupid simply for attempting it.
I will say it’s kind of astonishing how easily we can pile so much contempt on the minutae of behavior of a few not-particularly-privelaged people who were willing to risk everything to nonviolently fight for their ideals, however disagreeable those ideals are to us. Yet do we make similar contempt known to the leaders who didn’t care to count the civilian deaths accrued in our name? Rather ungracious of us not to thank all the dead Iraqis who had no choice about getting bombed to death because the leader we reelected either screwed up in his search for non-existent WMDS, unilaterally decided they needed liberation, or felt like buying very expensive flypaper (depending on what explanation we’re on now). Even with the most forgiving reading of why this war started, these dead civilians–many of them children–paid the ultimate price for the machinations and desires of our Republic, yet how many of us stand up to thank them?
And sorry about that, bytewords.
you are saheli after all :).
and
Totally orthogonal. My stance on the war (contra) has nothing to do with the fact that these rescuees seem to have acted very ungraciously.
Well, you are contra, so yeah, I wasn’t talking to you specifically. I’m just astonished at the the general ease and speed with which they are being excoriated–almost as if people were hoping they’d screw up so they could be piled upon. Callings someone ungracious, as you did, or pointing out that they could be thankful without being hypocritical, as I did, is not the contempt I was talking about, which was a bit more global.
I think the lesson is I should not leave serious comments when I am so preoccupied.:-)
well… I’m generally pro-…BUT, I’d really rather that they expressed gratitude AND help out with rescuing other / future hostages.
Still, I suppose there’s a small, very wishful part of me that wanted them to come out of it with at least some recognition that there are other bad guys floating around in Iraq besides the American policy (& its implementors) they love to hate. But I suppose getting some folks over the hump that the choice is bad vs. worse rather than Good vs. bad is very wishful thinking….