Rescuing the peace campaigners...

Hes all over the news today, Norman Kember that is, the 74 year old British peace campaigner who felt a strong compulsion to go to Iraq last year in order, presumably, to either assist in whatever way he could (a devout Christian he felt it was his duty to do so), or for publicity purposes to further publicise his anti-war beliefs.

He doesn't seem to have been there on behalf of anyone else, no overall organisation, no outward campaigning, and yet he seems to have linked up with a group of people inside Iraq who have similar beliefs, when he was kidnapped it was from a house in which three other peace activists were taken.

Who are these people ?

Why do they feel an overwhelming need to travel to one of the most lethal countries int he world, a place where as a westerner without your own governments armed forces stood either side of you, you are very likely to be targeted for kidnap, most fools would surely understand that - so why do they do it ?

We shouldn't overlook the fact either that one of his housemates, American Tom Fox, was murdered by the same captors two weeks ago, this was not a cheap publicity stunt, these peace campaigners were captured by genuine terrorists who genuinely cared not one fig about their lives and would have willingly killed all of them without a second thought.

So what on earth would make you put yourself in the same situation ?

Surely Norman Kember didn't think that as "a Christian" he would be immune from terrorist kidnappers, surely he didn't think he'd be able to explain to his kidnappers when they knocked on the door of his house on that day in November that they'd got the wrong person and he was only here to help ?

And yet I think that that is exactly what these people think, I believe that they are misguided, nay brain-washed, by their religion into believing that if they are "good" enough and if they follow their "gods teachings" and use words like "compassion" and "reach out" and "support", then their god will enclose them in some sort of protective bubble in a alien war machine from "War of the Worlds" sort of stylee, and that even if that doesn't work then their faith will protect them through their trials.

The same thing used to happen in the Middle Ages when complete royal families from all across Europe would band together and ride off to what we now know of as "The Middle East" in order to quell the barbarian hordes of Muslims from Turkey and eastwards - King Richard I of England managed to get himself kidnapped and held to ransom in exactly the same way as Norman Kember has and amazingly he was released unharmed too.

And so Norman Kember has to be rescued by Allied Forces from his kidnappers, placing them at considerable risk over a protracted period of time, and even while he is sitting sipping tea in the British Embassy for the press corps to photograph he is quoted as saying that he wants to go back onto the streets of Baghdad and continue his work, and despite the outcry from the British media in a "what sort of a nutter is he" stylee, he finds support from Dr Bruce Kent, the well known peace campaigner and former mouthpiece of the Anglican religion, who thinks that Norman Kember has a right to place himself in such situations, and he goes so far as to say that every Christian has an obligation to place themselves into such situations because Governments and private contractors have done the same.

So there you have it, if you call yourself a Christian then Bruce Kent thinks you should be lying down in front of tanks on an Iraqi road somewhere while also dodging the pickup trucks that seem to be the vehicle of favour for most terrorist kidnappers, watch out allied troops, you're going to be busy in the next few weeks avoiding running them over while at the same time looking out for the ones that have gone for a ride in the back of a Nissan Navarro.