You know I gotta say something, right?
I've been sitting on this one, trying to organize my thoughts carefully before writing something down and putting it up for the world to see. But I think I've figured out what I want to say, and I hope to do so with an economy of words, rather than through my usual explosion of prose.
To make it short, I have very little sympathy for these people. I hate to say it, but that's the way I honestly feel.
No one deserves to die this way, and the Taliban are assholes. But those are constants in this equation – this, we already know. In the end, the only people directly responsible for the hostages' present predicament are the hostages themselves.
Dude – posing in front of the "Please stay the fuck out of Afghanistan unless you really, really have to go" sign and effectively giving fate the middle finger...even non-Christian folks surely would have too much of a healthy fear of God to go that far.
But that's the point, now in'nit? They have an over-developed sense of matyrdom; or the belief that the rules of the City of Man don't apply to them, given that they think the Hand of God will keep and protect them, even if they walk in front of a moving train.
Hey, that's fine – if you're not dragging your country and the rest of the world into a diplomatic and ethical mess because you've been swigging at the Kool-Aid too long. The way I see it, one's journey into heaven isn't going to be barred by not walking into the Valley of Death in the middle of a war zone, in a country that already has many religions – that, oops, mostly aren't Christian, and have expressly forbidden the teaching of said religion there. At the threat of your life, by gunpoint, written out in expressed warnings, again and again.
In the unfortunate event that they are killed, I frankly don't think anyone who approved of them going in the first place – friends or family – has much moral ground to stand on in demanding the early withdrawal of Korean troops. You know, lots of journalists and other workers were over there doing whatever they felt they had to do, but took what they did and their situations with a certain gravity, a knowledge that they knew the risks, which they accepted and tried to minimize by keeping a low profile, respecting the culture (or at least doing the required do-diligence to reduce risk for themselves and all in their party); these people were not much of a step above arrogant, ethnocentric, ludicrously self-deluded tourists-as-missionaries who justified their stupidity and arrogance with spreading God's word.
Don't get me wrong – I respect anyone who chooses to do so. But ignoring all reasonable warnings from both the host and even your own governments, running around in a bus all together without the security arrangements that are considered basic to anyone operating there, and blatantly engaging in missionary work while treating the whole thing like a trip to Disneyland – arrgh!
That's beyond stupid, beyond irresponsible, and eminently selfish.
If and when anyone loses their lives in that group over there, I unfortunately have to say that I have little sympathy in my heart for them, because my soul has been wrenched enough when I saw the look of horror on the face of one of the men beheaded by insurgents a few years ago; there are few things in my life I regret seeing – that video is one of them.
What sticks out in my mind, as this emotionally exhausting war has dragged on and on, claiming victims on all sides, is the fact that the people who go before them in death at the end of a sword wanted to live and showed it by taking precautions and accepting the challenges and risks inherent to what they were doing.
This is the very definition of courage, and I reserve a special respect for people such as Daniel Pearl, who have risked (and sometimes lost) their lives to get the story out, or Jean Chung, the Korean photojournalist who just won a prestigious award for her work in Afghanistan, who is smart, knows her environment, and has the fundamental respect for where she is such that she stays as safe as possible while doing what is inherently dangerous work.
What these deluded missionaries are engaged in is an exercise in profound stupidity and arrogance, which unfortunately just might get them killed. No one wants them to die; but I'm sorry to say that I'll reserve my grief and emotion – what little there is left at this point in this gruesome war – for people who actually give a shit about their lives and don't treat what they're doing like a game.
And for anyone who wants the Korean government to withdraw troops on behalf of these nincompoops who literally up and walked right into the middle of the line of fire and basically handed the Taliban a kiloton of leverage – tell it to Daniel Pearl's wife, or the other people who lost their lives and behaved like they gave enough of a crap about what they were doing to treat their own lives, as well as the work they were engaged in, with enough respect to go about doing it properly, meaning, in a way far less likely to get them killed, or at least used as hostages. I'd like to hear what people like Daniel Pearl's wife thinks of these people, who seem to take their lives – or, at least, the situation they're walking into – for a joke.
