[BRIEF NOTE] Terrorism's logic

[rfmcdonald]

The news about Canadian hostages James Loney and Harmeet Sooden isn't good.

Loney, 41, along with former Montrealer Harmeet Sooden, 32, who lives in New Zealand, Briton Norman Kember, 74, and American Tom Fox, 54, were kidnapped Nov. 26.

Their captors, a previously unknown group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigade, have threatened to kill them tomorrow unless all detainees held by U.S. and Iraqi authorities in Iraq are released.

The group has denounced the four members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams as spies.

Numerous vigils are being held both in Canada and the West Bank and there have been pleas for the safe release of the Christian Peacemakers from around the world.

[. . .]

Christian Peacemakers Teams is an ecumenical organization that believes in an aggressive form of pacifism.

Formed in 1988, the group is based in Toronto and Chicago and has projects all over the world.

Christian Peacemakers opposed the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. It has seven members in Iraq, including the four held hostage.

As I said after the murder of Margaret Hassan last November, there are some awfully nihilistic people in the Iraqi resistance. This nihilism fits wonderfully into a strategy intended to discourage people from imagining the possibility of peace in Iraq, or of friendship with Iraqis, or of any future between Muslims and non-Muslims that doesn't involve pitched battle and intense hatred.

I hope that Loney and Sooden will meet a better fate than Hassan. Optimism, alas, doesn't seem to be merited.