Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Ecliptik on January 21, 2003, 11:59:47 AM
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Humans Shielding Saddam
Anne Kingston, National Post.
As one would reasonably expect, Grace Trevett's children are heartsick about their mother's intention to travel to Baghdad to become a "human shield." The 45-year-old mother of four is part of the latest convoy of anti-war protestors on its way to Iraq. When they arrive, they'll join hundreds of other prospective human shields who plan to position themselves in front of potential Allied targets in a bid to forstall war.
Becoming a human shield has become the most extreme expression of fulminating anti-war sentiment. It's the protest gesture du jour, what the fashionable Western militant is up to this season now that anti-globalization seems so year 2000.
But, as is the case with many such trends, the underlying logic motivating the human shield movement is somewhat faulty, as an interview Trevett gave to The Sunday Telegraph on the weekend makes abundantly clear. "I am doing this to drive home the point that my life is equal to that of an Iraqi civilian," she said. "In order to make that point properly, I have to be prepared to die for my principles."
Now were Trevett about to embark on a trading-places program in which an Iraqi mother of four and her children travel safely to Stroud, Gloucestershire, in exchange for her presence in Iraq, perhaps her self-sacrifice would be understandable, even noble.
But her blithe willingness to sacrifice her life, and to leave her children motherless, to protest a war she disagrees with would suggest she considers the life of an Iraqi citizen worth very little indeed. It's even more baffling given her recent battle with cancer. "I faced the fragility of life and I came through with tremendous gratitude," she said.
So let's get this straight: To express gratitude for being alive, she's willing to die? Or does her confidence heading off to Baghdad stem from a sense of Western entitlement? Does she, like other Western human shields, not understand that she's taking a huge risk, one that will potentially create even more collateral damage and confusion in an already horrible landscape?
Probably not. Implicit in the human-shield gesture is the misbegotten faith that U.S.-led forces will not rain bombs down on their own -- that the "us" they represent will hold more sway than the "them" that is the Iraqi population.
This kind of moral hubris was best articulated by Cliff Kindy, an organizer for Christian Peacemakers, a group that has been active gathering seniors from Canada and the U.S. to act as human shields. "You get about 500 grandmas and grandpas from around the world and you scatter them," Kindy told The Chicago Tribune. "That would give them a collective moral authority."
Establishing moral authority, rather than actually aiding Iraqi people, would appear to be the human shields' priority. For all the talk of being equal to oppressed Iraqis, Kindy's comment makes clear that he believes the life of a few non-Iraqi grandpas and grandmas is of far more value.
What makes the human shields' naïveté particularly dangerous, however, is that, for all of their good intentions, they're protecting Saddam's regime rather than the Iraqi people. The shields, of course, will argue otherwise -- that their solidarity is with Iraqi civilians, a group that has been battered by decades of war and international sanctions and which deserves no further anguish. So why is it then that it's the Iraqi dictatorship -- one well-practiced in employing its citizens, as well as Western hostages, as unwilling human shields -- that's so delighted by the Western human shield influx? They're laying on the red-carpet treatment, meeting Western human shields at the border and ferrying them to designated sites.
At these sites, paradoxically, the Western shields will share space with a growing number of Arab militants being sent there to purposefully defend Iraqi institutions. The contrast between these two groups would be laughable were the situation not so potetially calamitous.
The Western familiarity with human shield protest derives from tame and successful examples of activists using the technique to protest cruelty to animals or logging, whereas the Arab experience is that the human shield is an utterly expendable construct.
One man who did not live long enough to find that out was George Weber, a 73-year-old retired high school teacher from Chesley, Ont. Weber, who traveled to Baghdad in December as one of the Christian Peacemaker "grandpas," was killed in a traffic accident on a Iraq highway last week. The irony of the situation is inescapable. But would his death have served a greater purpose had he lived long enough to die as a human shield? More sadly, no, a truth one hopes Grace Trevett's children will never know.
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Darwin in action
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I certainly hope the US Air Force would not be deterred from dropping bombs on a target by a bunch of hippie-soap dodgers chained to a structure. They KNOW what they are getting into..if they get blown up.. oh well toejam happens.
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I think that's the point of the article... these human shield people are morons because the USAF would strike at neccessary targets whether these twits are there or not.
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Darwin in action it is. A self weeding, of the obviously very shallow end, of gene pool. Pity they wouldn't qualify for the darwin award as they have already bred. :(
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well you heard what Bush said........ if you harbor terrorists, you are as guilty as the terrorists themselves........ I would have to say that being a human shield for them would constitute "harboring" terrorists.
I would be surprised if they make it that long...... I'm sure an Iraqi will kill them soon enough........ or if we start bombing, the Iraqis will bomb them, and say we did it.
reminds me of the story of a hippy tree hugger who chain himself to a tree to keep them from cutting down a forest.... the animals need a home, he said....... that night while still chained to the tree, a bear came along and ate him.
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The selfish inconsiderate squeak.
She is leaving her KIDS behind to do this? Makes me wonder what could be the REAL motivation behind her going to Bagdad.
I hope she gets a GBU up her bum...she deserves it....although her kids will suffer more than she would.
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Makes me wonder what could be the REAL motivation behind her going to Bagdad.
It sounds like she wants attention, like those bimbos who visit serial killers in prison.
ra
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Originally posted by ra
It sounds like she wants attention, like those bimbos who visit serial killers in prison.ra
EXACTLY...that is why she is a selfish inconsiderate squeak. It isn't about anti-war protesting, it about her need for attention.
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Let 'em fry....
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I remember when people used to think it was a good idea to lay across train tracks to stop trains believed to be carrying nuclear weapons. Those that didn't get off of the tracks are dead or in wheel chairs.
I've never felt a shred of pitty for them and I doubt I'll feel a shred of pitty for anyone that volunteers to martyr themselves.
MiniD
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Ya know I don't favor war but I hope they miss the target and hit this B****. These people need to get head out of the dirt..they don't get that he's fronting money for terrorism! And hiding weapons from the UN...:mad:
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I have more respect for this woman, who is willing to die for what she believes in then in any of the arm chair warriors on this BBS. She certainly shows more courage then Bush did when it came for his time to serve.
The hypocracy astounds me. It's all wonderful and brave when a man leaves his family to fight for his country (damned if he is drafted or actually believes in the war). But a women leaves her family to risk her life for what she truely believes in and suddenly she's a squeak? Cripes.
PS: The article is a bunch or spinny, propaganda roadkill.
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Thrawn...Back away from the Keyboard... You Commie Hippie Freak You.
Forgot...Your also Anti-American too
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Originally posted by Thrawn
But a women leaves her family to risk her life for what she truely believes in and suddenly she's a squeak? Cripes.
No, no..she is a selfish inconsiderate squeak. Her kids could grow up without a mother as a result of this.
She sounds like a modern day Jane Fonda...that alone makes me want to drop a bomb on her.
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Originally posted by Curval
No, no..she is a selfish inconsiderate squeak. Her kids could grow up without a mother as a result of this.
And kids that have parents in the military could grow up with their parents. Are they inconsiderate as well?
Your country nor mine is at war with Iraq yet. She's not like Jane Fonda until they are.
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Burn Burn them !
You want to look primitive or is it a joke I don't get ?
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Perhaps she will have the good courtesy to carry a GPS transponder? It will make the targeting eaiser.
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Yet again the liberals just love somebody who prefers our enemies.. Yea!
Lets all join in another round of:
Death To Amreeka!
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Thrawn, you are smokin crack!
you are comparing apples to oranges. this squeak is willing to orphan her kids for something she heard on the squealing news. all she knows about the Iraqis is what she hears on CNN. the government can't tell us all of the details, but I'm pretty sure they have a pretty good reason for starting a war with Iraq. and no, it's not for the oil.
That's the problem with world, they think if the US goes to war with Iraq, we are the bad guys, but if Saddam nukes your pretty little Canada, y'all will say, " why didn't the US do anything about it!" we are damned if we do, damned if we don't.
now go hug a tree or something.
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Originally posted by Thrawn
And kids that have parents in the military could grow up with their parents. Are they inconsiderate as well?
No, not at all. If you are in the military you raise your kids to understand that the possibility exists that you could be called to fight and potentially die in a war.
This woman is off to Iraq to get on CNN.
Big, huge, massive, whopping difference.
..and while our countries are not YET at war with Iraq, the media and Sadaam are going to use her to advance their own propaganda in exactly the same way Mrs. Fonda was used. Both of these women did and are doing so very willingly. Makes me sick.
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Death To Amreeka!
DISSENT IS DISLOYALTY, CRITICISM IS ANTI-AMERICANISM, WE SAVED YOUR tulips AND YOU SHALL KNEEL!
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Originally posted by Curval
you are in the military you raise your kids to understand that the possibility exists that you could be called to fight and potentially die in a war.
That's an assumption. What makes you think that?
This woman is off to Iraq to get on CNN.
Another assuption. Can you read her mind?
..and while our countries are not YET at war with Iraq, the media and Sadaam are going to use her to advance their own propaganda in exactly the same way Mrs. Fonda was used. Both of these women did and are doing so very willingly. Makes me sick.
Really, looks like our media is already using her for propaganda purposes. The wording of this article makes me sick.
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Fair point, I haven't checked my sources, and I don't know her motivations for a fact.
Isn't the National Post a Canadian rag though? It came out just as I left Canada so I don't know much about it. Please enlighten me on the political lean of this paper.
As to the issue...we'll see. She sure sounds alot like Jane to me.
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Originally posted by Curval
Isn't the National Post a Canadian rag though? It came out just as I left Canada so I don't know much about it. Please enlighten me on the political lean of this paper.
As to the issue...we'll see. She sure sounds alot like Jane to me.
The National Post was the Conrad Black's (Hollinger) answer to the Astor's Globe and Mail (for awhile Globe and Mail was Canada''s only national paper). The National Post is generally crap, the G&M is generally good.
Anyways, both papers are owned by the Astors. Black got the diddly out of Canada after Cretien wouldn't let him become a Lord. Black sold his Canadian papers to the Astors. Which gives them a virtual monopoly on Canadian news sources, thank god for the internet.
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Any americans among those people going to act as human shields should have thier citizenship revoked. They are no longer americans, as they are fighting for Iraq. This is not a right the constitution grants, and is dangerously close to treason. Bomb em.
At the moment I fully support the possible war in Iraq. But I also fully support everyone's right to to dissent. Those who do not support the war have every right to speak out against it. The country simply wouldn't operate without it.
Going to assist saddam personally is not dissent, or anti-war sentiment.
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...as they are fighting for Iraq.
Worse, they are defending Hussein's regime.
ra
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Regime is such a silly word.
re·gime also ré·gime ( P ) Pronunciation Key (r-zhm, r-)
n.
1.
(a) A form of government.
(b)A government in power; administration: suffered under the new regime.
2. A prevailing social system or pattern.
3. The period during which a particular administration or system prevails.
4. A regulated system, as of diet and exercise; a regimen.
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I wish them only a horrible death in the explosive fireball of a JDAM. Degenerate traitors.
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Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
I wish them only a horrible death in the explosive fireball of a JDAM. Degenerate traitors.
Who is the lady in the article a traitor to?
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Regime is such a silly word.
(b)A government in power;
Thrawn is a silly word.
ra
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Who is the lady in the article a traitor to?
Canada.
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Oh well, if they were intelligent they would find better means of stopping bombs than themselves.
-SW
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Originally posted by ra
Canada.
Canada is not at war with Iraq.
(b)A government in power;
Have you ever used the term "the Bush regime" in a post? It sounds like another spinny, propaganda word. In western media you would see, "The Bush government" and "The Hussien regime. In the Iraq it would be the opposite.
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Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
Oh well, if they were intelligent they would find better means of stopping bombs than themselves.
-SW
Like what?
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Which one is having bigger cojones:
A) That woman heading to middle-east trying to stop the war with the way she feels is good or..
B) Grünhertz and some others squeaking about it and telling on the bulletinboard that she should die while doing that.
Some of you should wear a dress.
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Cardboard?
It'd be just as effective.
-SW
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Originally posted by AKS\/\/ulfe
Cardboard?
It'd be just as effective.
-SW
Reeeeally big fly swatters?
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This is so unfashionable.... I mean it's been done
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ummm... ok.... ummm... is she a hottie?? I mean, like... ummm.... is she butt ugly??
It could make a diffrence yah know.
Because if she's a hottie, it'd be a waste, right?
..and if she's ugly, it'd be like a mercy killing.
right?
not that it matters.. either way, it's dead tuna on toast.
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Originally posted by Staga
Which one is having bigger cojones:
A) That woman heading to middle-east trying to stop the war with the way she feels is good or..
B) Grünhertz and some others squeaking about it and telling on the bulletinboard that she should die while doing that.
Some of you should wear a dress.
I vote C.
I'm correct and she is wrong.
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Originally posted by BEVO
the government can't tell us all of the details, but I'm pretty sure they have a pretty good reason for starting a war with Iraq. and no, it's not for the oil.
...so you dont know any of the reasoning, but you can unquestionably vouch for it's merit & righteousness?
Originally posted by BEVO
reminds me of the story of a hippy tree hugger who chain himself to a tree to keep them from cutting down a forest.... the animals need a home, he said....... that night while still chained to the tree, a bear came along and ate him.
LOL - is that true? post a link (bet its from TheOnion (http://theonion.com) )
Originally posted by Hangtime
...either way, it's dead tuna on toast.
as long as its dolphin free...
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LOL!
I'm with Thrawn and Co on this one.