It’s sad when they are delusional

One of the peace activists recently kidnapped by the Islamic extremists was written about in tomorrows Washingon Post.  It’s so sad to read the words he wrote before going to Iraq and what his friends here are saying now:

As Tom Fox headed toward the end of his first week in captivity in Iraq, friends said the 54-year-old musician and peace activist was well aware of the dangers he faced in the war-ravaged country.

He was so realistic, in fact, that he devised a written plan he distributed to friends and co-workers that they should follow if he were taken hostage. Don’t pay ransom for his return, he wrote in an October 2004 e-mail, and reject the use of violence in trying to win his freedom. Don’t “vilify” the abductors, he said, but instead “try to understand the motives of their actions.”

“We are very worried about our four friends,” Christian Peacemaker Teams said in a statement on its Web site yesterday. “We fear that whoever is holding them has made a mistake. [They] are four men who came to Iraq to work for peace and explain their opposition to the occupation. They are not spies.”

At the service in McLean, where Fox’s e-mail from 2004 was read aloud, his friends reminisced about his ideals. One woman said that just before Fox left for Iraq, he told her, “Too many are willing to die for war and too few are willing to die for peace.”

“Try to understand the motives of their actions”?  The motives are, “You are not Muslim or you are not the right flavor of Muslim.  You must convert or die.”  “Explaining your opposition to the occupation” isn’t going to yield the desired results.

And who has ever said they were willing to die for war?  I’ve heard or read about people willing to die for country, freedom, honor, family, way of life, and a lot of other things but I’ve never heard it said they were willing to die for war. 

These people are living in an alternate reality.  It’s sad their introduction to reality will likely be in the form of a box full of sand covered body parts.  Don’t expect it will convert many of them.  They are prime canditates for When Prophecy Fails mention.

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