I was delighted to hear this quote yesterday, made by Norman Kember having been freed after over 100 days in captivity, especially since Tom Ford’s murder a couple of weeks ago had made the situation look ever bleaker. And by the sounds of it, the SAS team led a rescue mission worthy of the most exciting episode of 24, and I am indulging in some Friday morning work displacement by pleasantly daydreaming some Jack Bauer-style fantasies about the operation mounted to effect the rescue.
So far, Messrs Blair, Straw and Reid have issued statements making political mileage out of the brave rescue, the months of covert surveillance and intelligence work which the undoubtedly heroic team undertook. More politicians will undoubtedly jump in soon to help celebrate the release. Which makes me recall the way that members of the government branded Mr Kember as reckless when he was first captured. Doubtless the taking of hostages has made the already incredibly delicately balanced situation in Iraq even more precarious. But Norman Kember, along with people like Margaret Hassan, whose years of humanitarian work in the area led to her death at the hands of kidnappers eager to reap their own mileage, seems to me to have genuinely campaigned for the good of the Iraqi people. The oft-misquoted Burke quote, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing’ springs to mind as a justification of their actions.
His wife, Pat, made a touching statement on a New Zealand radio station, saying that she felt he had been ‘a bit silly’ to go to Iraq. Kember is a life-long peace activist, who first made a pacifist stand when he refused to do national service in the army, choosing instead to work in a hospital. Despite the danger which he knew it might place him in, he felt he had to go to Iraq to try and make a difference. All people who believe in freedom should laud him, and any suggestion of him having brought this on himself should be avoided. The news of his release will be a huge relief to those who caused a situation in Iraq which necessitates people like him to try and make a stance. The hypocrisy of their claiming it as their victory is heightened by the fact that the news sits on so many newspapers next to the headline that Bush is predicting at least another 3 years of occupation by US forces in Iraq.
‘All people who believe in freedom should laud him’… I dunno about that? Perhaps all people that believe in peace should laud him? Y’see, sometimes freedom has to be fought for. Iraq is a fine example being that rednecks are fighting for the freedom to drive big, fuck off ‘cathedrals to consumerism’. While at the same time the military-industrial complex is fighting for the freedom to make a ‘bomb’… no pun intended!
Hell, men have fought the less!
T.
But my point is, if we believe in freedom we should believe that this man is free to go and pursue his desire to fight for a cause he believes in. If the government here denies him that right, or berates him for pursuing it, why do they care about establishing the self same freedoms in Iraq?
Oh, that’s just a pretext Rec… everyone knows that! They wish to establish freedom of the market in Iraq and like it or not that is where the real hypocrisy lay. Coz the truth is, consumerist ideology of post new right liberalism is something we all help to prop up and Iraq is just a rather unpleasant extension of that. Anyway, it would have been politically, socially and culturally unacceptable for the British military not to pursue a rescue attempt.
So like it or not, ol’ Norman, Holy Rollin’ Kemper put lives in potential danger with his ill-conceived little crusade to the mean streets of Baghdad! I’d support your argument that he should have the freedom to behave like an idiot if and only if British ‘boots’ had the freedom to say fuck him, he got himself into this crap and thus became part of the problem, not the solution!
Only that’s a freedom that don’t exist due to reasons already pointed out and despite any assurances from misguided Christian soldiers waving the desire to have their asses forcibly pulled out of the fire!
The road to hell is paved with good intentions and if my ol’ man, my husband, my brother, my son got shot up coz of some dildo’s conscience, I’d be narked about that shit dooode… and so would you!
T.
Freedom is not about giving people the opportunity to do whatever they believe in…it has to be married with personal responsibility.Where was Kember’s?
That is not true, what you are talking about is social cooperation for mutual benefit. Freedom is what it is… autonomy! Once you start slapping ifs and buts into the equation it becomes conditional and that is by definition, not freedom! On the other hand, America exercises freedom because there is nobody to stop them! So quit cheezing and thank fuck it ain’t China!
Anyway, dunno about Kember but obviously he’d rap some shit about ultimate responsibility being to his Episcopal faith! Urm, yeah… represented by some twat in a knob shaped hat!
T.
P.S Actually I wasn’t referring to the Pontiff, just a lowly Bishop of another denomination! Catholics stand down!
BS Tone.Your idea of freedom tumbles into anarchy before you know it. Kember probably thought it was divine intervention that saved him.He’s a naive idealist who could have done a lot more useful work at home.He missed his calling as a lollypop man.
Nooooo, that wasn’t ‘my idea’ of freedom. I am simply stating that contrived cooperation is not freedom. In fact, while I don’t advocate anarchy, that is closer to the mark than anything else that has been alluded to. Of course things then get a little Darwinian, a little ‘law of the jungle’… but surely you wouldn’t argue that a Gazelle didn’t live a free life just coz it ends up getting chased by a Lion? Further more, at least in this instance the Predator had the grace to end its exploitation in the blink of an eye, rather than drag it out for a lifetime. The reality for many living in the so-called freedom of the Corporate State!
T.
Laws of the jungle don’t work for humans.
We are ants, or maybe bees.Religion is the honey that keeps us all together.Lets face it, we are all just following a chemical trail in the end.
Jesus, it gets quite confusing after a bit doesn’t it?
Hmmm, you’re ass backwards but I get your point. Money is the Honey, i.e. the produce (not wholly, but clearly money is an intricate mechanism to production). Religion can indeed be used as a tool of manipulation, or chemical trail as you put it, or opiate as Marx put it… only we are no further from what I was saying originally.
I mean if you think we are all like bees, dude I can dismiss that out of hand. Society is riddled with sociopathic predators and that is just the extreme end. More importantly, any psychologist will tell you that ALL cooperation is machiavellian, i.e. at root, borne of self-interest. It is actually paradoxically using ‘Theory of Mind’ to compete by way of cooperation… kinda weird to get your head around, but you’re a doctor! You can handle it!
Oh, and it ain’t confusing… I dig on this shit!
Ha! Ha! Ha!
T.