Byron is a dear friend of mine, but we see things very differently when it comes to matters of national security and the use of military force. My recent criticisms of the Christian Peacemaker Teams' alleged refusal to assist the coalition forces with information that might help locate and rescue other kidnap victims has led him to rise to their defense. His complete e-mail is on the Feedback page. If you're interested in following the discussion I encourage you to read his e-mail first and then return to this post where I try to answer some of his criticisms and concerns.
I had argued yesterday that to refuse to help the coalition find other kidnap victims is not significantly different than refusing to give local police information one might have on an abduction of someone in the states.
Byron argues that this is a bad analogy. His words are indented in what follows:
It seems evident to me that as caring Christian people, they surely would cooperate with legitimate authorities doing bone fide rescue work and to suggest otherwise is really odd.
But why think they would? CPT refuses to cooperate with the legitimate authorities in Iraq, not just the coalition, but also the Iraqi authorities established through a duly elected government. If they won't cooperate with them why think they'd cooperate with local police? CPT might cooperate with American police, of course, but if so, they'd be inconsistent.
Furthermore, why suggest that what coalition forces are doing in hunting for kidnap victims is not "bona fide rescue work"? In what sense are they not genuine attempts to rescue those who've been abducted by terrorist killers?
If CPT wishes to argue that they are justified in not cooperating with U.S. forces to find kidnap victims because those forces are illegitimate, then we might ask them if they would refuse to cooperate with Saddam's regime if a similar occasion had arisen. Saddam's regime was elected by the people, and since it was, in CPT's eyes, an illegitimate act for the U.S. to overthrow him, it follows that CPT believes that the Baathists constituted a legitimate government. If so, CPT should have no scruple against cooperating with Saddam to help find an innocent crime victim, even though they personally detested Saddam himself. Their logic would lead them to cooperating with Saddam but not cooperating with the coalition or the current Iraqi authorities. That seems pretty odd, too, I think.
[T]hey are .... protesting the occupation of U.S. forces that they believe are putting local civilians in harm's way.
The threat to civilians in Iraq comes from the insurgents and foreign Islamists who have deliberately killed and maimed tens of thousands of Iraqis. I don't think one would find very many Iraqis who see the U.S. as a significant threat to their safety. On the other hand, one would find many Iraqis who would say that, although they don't like having American troops on their soil, neither do they want them to leave just yet.
They are there to protect their Iraqi friends from the U.S. military who has bombed their homes, factories, schools and hospitals.
I know of no evidence either that U.S. forces bombed schools and hospitals or that the CPT teams have prevented a single military action beyond the rescue of innocent abductees. Is there any evidence that CPT in Iraq has saved anyone, except the insurgents, from harm?
[T]hey think that the occupying forces are enforcing an unjust occupation and are to be opposed.
To be sure, they think this, but why, exactly, is the occupation unjust? What about it makes it unjust? I can understand (though I disagree) why they might think the war was unjust, but it doesn't follow that because the war was unjust that therefore the occupation is. What would be unjust would be for the U.S. to say we shouldn't have invaded in the first place, so we're getting out, and the Iraqi people are on their own. If that's what CPT wants the United States to do then they want us to execute what would perhaps be the greatest betrayal and act of treachery in modern history.
That they won't give information (if in fact that is even true, as you yourself wonder near the end of your piece) to people that they do not trust, who have been known to kill the wrong bad guys in other similar situations, is not at all--not at all!---the same situation as your hypothetical.
Have the police in this country not been known to make mistakes and shoot the wrong people? If Byron thinks it's not at all the same as the hypothetical I present, he and I will just have to disagree on that, but I'd like to see the CPT folks explain the nuances of the difference to the family of Jill Carroll and others who are being held against their will and whose lives are suspended in the balance.
And, by the way, as you know, they have thanked their rescuers, and done so formally and publicly. Since you know that, I wonder why you run this old piece without any correction to his inaccurate accusation?
The American branch of CPT has issued a bland blanket statement thanking any who were involved in the rescue. Neither the Canadian nor the British branch has done so, apparently, even though the rescued victims were Canadian and British. The article cited at the link above points this out.
