Best of the Web Today - March 23, 2006

Some good news from Iraq: "U.S. and British forces freed one Briton and two Canadians early Thursday in a military operation, ending a four-month hostage drama in which an American among the group was shot to death and dumped on a Baghdad street earlier this month," the Associated Press reports. The ex-hostages belong to the Christian Peacemaker Teams, a group that--well, let's let the CPT explain for itself in a statement issued today:

[The ex-hostages] were in Iraq to learn of the struggles facing the
people in that country. They went, motivated by a passion for justice and peace
to live out a nonviolent alternative in a nation wracked by armed conflict. They
knew that their only protection was in the power of the love of God and of their
Iraqi and international co-workers. We believe that the illegal occupation of
Iraq by Multinational Forces is the root cause of the insecurity which led to
this kidnapping and so much pain and suffering in Iraq. The occupation must
end.

Today, in the face of this joyful news, our faith compels us to
love our enemies even when they have committed acts which caused great hardship
to our friends and sorrow to their families. . . .
We pray that
Christians throughout the world will, in the same spirit, call for justice and
for respect for the human rights of the thousands of Iraqis who are being
detained illegally by the U.S. and British forces occupying Iraq. During these
past months, we have tasted of the pain that has been the daily bread of
hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Why have our loved ones been taken? Where are
they being held? Under what conditions? How are they? Will they be released?
When?


It's not clear whom the CPT statement means by "our enemies." But
the only enemy they seem to recognize is the U.S. and its allies, whose
"occupation" of Iraq is the "root cause" of the ex-hostages' captivity, and
whose detention of "thousands of Iraqis" they liken to their own kidnapping and
(in one case) murder by terrorists.

But if the CPT is going to "love our enemies," the least it could
do is thank them. The statement does not acknowledge that the hostages were
rescued by U.S. and British servicemen, or indeed that they were rescued at all;
it refers mysteriously to their having been "released," as if the kidnappers
themselves had decided to let them go.

This seems to run deeper than a case of simple ingratitude. There is a whole strange worldview at work here--a theology, if you will. We don't claim to understand it fully, but it seems to equate America as the root of all evil and America's adversaries as Edenic creatures--innocents who know not good or evil and thus bear no culpability for their bad actions.

If we have this right, it follows that the CPT Christians see themselves, by virtue of their faith, as being forgiven for being American, or for being from another nation that America has corrupted. This is why they cannot be grateful to, or forgiving of, America: For them that would amount to thanking or forgiving sin itself.