CPT – Not Exactlty On America’s Side
I received an email from a reader yesterday. It had a link to a Duluth News Tribune Commentary by MICHELE NAAR-OBED. It is written by a Christian Peace Team member who knows 2 of the 4 CPT hostages being held by the terrorists in Iraq. The author goes to solidify my suspicions about the group and its motives. (At this point, I will pre-appologize to those of you who are currently in vigil for your friends or acquaintances safe return.)
Christian Peacemaker Teams began in 1984 as a call for Christians to devote the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war. The CPT-Iraq team has maintained a consistent presence in Baghdad, living unarmed outside the Green Zone since October 2002. We have been invited into the country by many Iraqi-based organizations. Together, our work has been to reduce violence, ensure human rights for all Iraqis, document and report violations of those rights, and to bring the voice and face of the ordinary Iraqi into the Western eye as we build bridges and call for an end to the occupation of Iraq. We have no political agenda and no economic or religious motivations.
Emphasis mine.
Um, I hate to be the one to break it to them, but that is a political agenda!
It is perhaps a bitter irony that the demands of those holding our friends is the immediate release of all Iraqi prisoners held in U.S. detention centers throughout Iraq. That has been a large part of CPT’s work since the occupation began. Since August 2003, the team has tried to locate detainees lost in the maze of detention centers, often at the request of frenzied family members. The team developed the “Adopt-a-Detainee” program asking folks in the U.S. to pressure their representatives to locate specific lost prisoners, to investigate reasons for their detainment and to begin a speedy release process when warranted.
When I was there in 2004, forces from the military base in Balad, just outside of Baghdad, would make sweeps of “insurgents,” picking up every male in the house at raids at 2 or 3 a.m. They would be taken off and family members would have no idea where they were sent. We took human rights lawyers to the base with us and would try to serve as a bridge between the lawyers and the base commanders. We would try to facilitate some system so that people could at least be tracked.
So this is Kerry’s source for his claim that our troops are “terrorizing Iraqis” at night. (Text & Video at Political teen)
CPT was one of the first groups to compile and report cases of abuse and torture in U.S.-controlled prisons in Iraq. The exposure of that scandal and the massacre in Fallujah resulted in virtually total loss of U.S. credibility around the world and certainly in Iraq.
That was when we went in and got the guys who had been killing all the people on buses, street corners, schools, and mosques?
I have to wonder if this group ever investigated the region for atrocities before the US invaded? Or are they just another anti-American group that seeks to destroy this country and the freedom and liberty that it stands for?
Sphere: Related Content
Interesting that CPT didn’t go into the Iraq until the U.S. did. Apparently the many Iraqi-based organizations didn’t see a need for outside help to “reduce violence, ensure human rights for all Iraqis, document and report violations of those rights” when Saddam was in charge – or just maybe he wouldn’t let them in. Of course, all these problems presumably will go away following the “end of the occupation of Iraq.”
My trackback attempt failed, so here you go: manual ping.
I abhor CPT. If they were merely idealistic I would hold a certain measure of respect for them. They are not. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the leadership is not. CPT seeks to undermine America. It uses pacifists and bleeding hearts to advance a political agenda. That is sickening.
That said, I am still very committed to seeing the hostages released.
Actually, I’ve run some crude numerical analyses on the CPT archives available on their site.
If you do a Google search for “Saddam” or “Hussein,” you’ll generally get about 20-30 pages of links, generally to CPT reports of human rights abuses that occurred under the former dictator’s regime.
If you do a similar search for “Bush,” you get about 20 pages of links, generally to CPT reports of human rights abuses or broader foreign policy concerns tied to the American presidency. If you narrow that down to +Bush +Iraq, there are under 15 pages of links.
In other words, my conclusion is that the CPT coverage is fairly evenhanded (although media reports of that coverage may very well exhibit a greater bias). If anything, Bush comes off fairly lightly in their reports, at least when compared directly to Hussein.
Do they have a political agenda? Yes, but I believe it exhibits a greater degree of nuance than is being suggested here. They’re against violence of any sort, especially when perpetrated against innocent civilians who are simply trying to get on with their lives. In other words, they’re opposed not only to the American occupation but also to the atrocities of the former dictatorship, the violence being perpetrated by the current insurgency, and the broader terrorist acts of Al Qaeda. In other words, they’re pretty much on the bad side of everyone who holds any degree of power in Iraq.
First off, use your real email, spammer.
Second, they only got 30 pages out of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands of people who were murdered? Are they compiling “atrocities” (BS) of the insurgency? Have they investigated the beheadings for human rights violations? Have they openly condemned OBL & the Terrorists? Zaqari? Have they demanded anything other than a US pullout? Have they demanded that the Iranians and Syrians pullout?
If they are so against violence, why is it that they do not speak out about it everywhere? How about the savage brutality in Africa? Where is teh outrage from them over that? Or are they just following the US around, since that will get them the headlines that they need in order to stay relevant?