Ungrateful victims. posted by Richard Seymour

The locusts stripping Iraq bare are insulted. General Sir Michael Jackson, a Bloody Sunday criminal, a Kosovo war criminal and now a loyal goon in the mobbing of Baghdad, told ITN that he was "saddened that there does not seem to have been a note of gratitude for the soldiers who risked their lives to save those lives". ITN arranged a phone-in programme about the release of Norman Kember and the Christian peacekeepers who were with him. The question: "Do you believe Norman Kember was right to put his life in danger for the sake of the Iraqi people? Or, do do you believe he's been irresponsible?" Such a question has its own pre-written answers. It calls upon ingrained cultural prejudices, sullen racism, resentment against do-gooders, those who have the temerity, the audacity, to actually consider the lives of Iraqis worth protecting and respecting. The answers: "What did he hope to achieve by going to Iraq? Our troops are already there to keep the peace!" "He put the lives of our troops in more danger." "How much has his rescue cost the taxpayer?"

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Asked to comment on the rescue of Briton Norman Kember, readers of Britain's Daily Telegraph generally excoriated Kember and the two Canadians as "irresponsible." A typical email read:

"No civilian has a `right' to enter a war zone to protest that war or dig up stories of abuse against the soldiers who are fighting it. These same soldiers must then go in and rescue these ridiculous people from certain death at the hands of their captors and risk their own lives doing it."

Terry Waite, whose own saintliness is matchless, has been called upon to question the tactics of the Christian peacemakers. And the Telegraph reports, Released hostages 'refuse to help their rescuers'. For The Times, the release of the hostages underlines "the warning against naive attempts by well-intentioned Western peace activists to ignore Iraq’s brutal politics and risk their lives."

Forget, if you like, that these peacemakers and pacifists specifically request that no military action is undertaken to release them in the event of a kidnap. The phoney excuses for this campaign of vilification are an affront to human intelligence. Heroism played no part in their release, unless you consider the folding of the mercenary group that held them an act of heroism. No risk - none at all - befell the troops who went in to the place of captivity and found the three hostages sitting alone and unguarded. If the activities of a group intent on protecting the human rights of Iraqis invites greater risk for the troops there, what does this say about the conduct of the troops? The crime, for these snivelling wretches, these utterly pathetic whiners, is to locate evidence of and draw attention to the crimes of the imperialists, to be insufficiently grateful to the warmongers, to refuse to be pliant and play the role of saps, media darlings who will testify to the brutality of Iraq, shower praise on the hired thugs, and tell tales of woe and regret. Surely, what General Jackson should ask for is an apology, not thanks. An apology from the irresponsible elements, the unruly pacifist dreamers, who dared to interfere with so delicate and responsible an operation as the pillaging of Iraq. The only Christian do-gooders welcome in Iraq are Franklin Graham's proselytisers, the Islam-is-evil cult that fulfils the historical mandate of the civilising mission. Christians for Bush, in short. Billy Graham led Bush to Christianity, Franklin delivered the invocation at his inauguration, and the missionaries they have dispatched to Iraq sanctify the holy war against evil, testify to its virtuosity, salute the brave boys and girls who bring death to the Lord's enemies, and fervently await the glorious rapture that is sure to come now that Israel has been established for almost sixty years into the age of television. Only they, with their masturbatory fantasies of Divine Genocide, are meritorious, they who will either convert the untermenschen or say amen and bow their heads respectfully as the Lord's conduits crush them. Christians for peace? Christians for human rights? Christians against racist war? Christians against the apocalypse? Don't you know how irresponsible that is?