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.

About Stan Guthrie

Stan Guthrie is an editor at large for Christianity Today magazine and for the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. His latest book is God's Story in 66 Verses. He also is author of All that Jesus Asks: How His Questions Can Teach and Transform Us, Missions in the Third Millennium: 21 Key Trends for the 21st Century, and A Concise Guide to Bible Prophecy. He is co-author of The Sacrament of Evangelism. Besides authoring, writing, and editing books, Stan is a literary agent, bringing together good authors, good books, and good publishers. Stan writes the monthly Priorities colum for BreakPoint.org. He has appeared on National Public Radio's €œTell Me More,€ WGN's Milt Rosenberg program, and many Christian shows, including The Eric Metaxas Show and Moody Radio'€™s €œNew Day Florida.€ A licensed minister and an inspirational speaker, he served as moderator for the Christian Book Expo panel discussion, Does the God of Christianity Exist, and What Difference Does It Make?
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