What’s the last thing you need while desperately trying to survive as your country is mercilessly bombed by a state-of-the-art US Air Force? How about a bunch of Western pacifists who can’t speak Arabic and don’t know their Dinars from their elbows standing around getting in the way?
The ‘human shield’ left for Iraq yesterday. In three Routemaster buses (the kind they stopped making around 1946, you see them in all the old movies). So at least we can assume it will take them several months to get there, which will be a relief to Baghdad because, as Adriana Cronin noted a few weeks ago, Baghdad residents like the always-interesting Salam Pax don’t actually want a ‘shield’ of pointless woolly Westerners making a burden of themselves. They would actually rather have proper help, like food and first aid on the border crossings, if anyone happens to feel like a bit of charity Gulf war work.
But this pack of doves’ real enemy is not American bombers or Western politicians: it’s you and me, the public. Although insistent that, “Nobody really wants this war except those who stand to gain from this by selling guns,” (well of course, there’s a stash of rifles ready and waiting up in my airing-cupboard right now) they are actually attempting to hold ordinary Western members of the public to ransom. Former US marine Ken Nichols-O’Keefe, founder of “The Truth Justice Peace Human Shield Action Group” is going on hunger strike, not until the war is stopped, but until more people join his cause.
Ten thousand supporters is the exact price he stuck on his own head.
“If we don’t get 10,000 people, I think this is a world that will be hard to live in for all of us” said Ken.
Well, at least he won’t be living in it; that should help a little bit.
“This conflict will lead to World War Three,”
…he went on, presumably in a burst of wishful thinking…
“We need to stop this war first and foremost, if we don’t, shame on us all and pity on us all.”
Shame and pity it is, then.
So, comrades, get yourselves out there with the Shield of Confusion, or the war vet snuffs it. What a choice. As shieldster Ube Evans said:
“Somebody’s got to save humanity from themselves. I’m very scared.”
Baghdad: be very afraid. These people are trying to help you.
Although, as the hunger strike isn’t scheduled until Ken arrives in Iraq, and as it will take them all so long to get there in the double-deckers, my guess is that T.T.J.P.H.S.A.G.’s (say it loudly with enthusiasm and people will think you’re speaking Arabic) real secret plan is to trundle up some time around Christmas when the war is over, have a little holiday, buy a few carpets, and fly back home again. Let’s hope so, for the Iraqi people’s sake.
Maybe the Iraqi’s will station them around ammunition dumps so we can let them give pieces a chance.
Maybe we should encourage this. Get them all to Baghdad protecting the most dangerous places with their crystals and maybe sanity will break out in the places they left behind and perhaps won’t ever be returning to.
I have a pet theory that what animates Lefties is self-hatred. They will embrace any cause that makes them feel better about themselves, as a result, no matter how historically moribund or obviously foolish it may be.
In this particular case we are getting a look at the tip of the Bell Curve. We are seeing a very short section containing Lefties for whom self-hatred is so intense and the apparence of their minority so plain that to die at the hands of the U.S. military would be orgasmic symmetry.
And good luck to them.
Nitpick, nitpick, nitpick but… they didn’t actually start making Routemaster buses until the 1950s and they do seem to be generally regarded as really rather good.
One interesting aspect to them is their two-man operation: one driver and one conductor. This, in a crowded city like London is a rather sensible arrangement – so they decided to abolish it. Or at least they tried but that was 30 years ago and there are still a few on the roads.
For more info see your here.
Yes, knew most of that about the buses, just, my irresistible urge to exaggerate for effect hijacked things yet again… And routemasters are great. But what a ludicrous image, three red double-deckers skiing through the deserts of North Africa. I mean, why??
I keep wondering what these people are thinking (ow, I shouldn’t do that – now there’s blood coming out of my ears) will happen when sound of US tanks is heard and the Iraqis start stringing up secret policemen. Will they join the secret policemen hanging from the lightposts or will they flee to the protection of the cruel US Marines???
I wait in anticipation of the anwser.
They’re driving to Iraq? Through the desert? I wonder if anybody bothered to tell them how important water is in the desert?
Maybe in a year some Bedouin are going to find three busses full of corpses in the middle of nowhere and be very confused…
Alice, Very funny fisk. Also, Dale’s comment on giving pieces a chance.
Actually, my question is about the leader of this self-appointed nitwits’ crusade, Kim Keefe. He apparently gave up his US citizenship in a fit of pique with America’s determination to protect itself. Having given up his citizenship (if what he says is true), he would have been required to surrender his passport. My question: which subsequent country accorded him citizenship and thus travel documents?
Isn’t it the case that a “stateless” person may get a UN passport?
Passport’s are not as big a deal as you may think. Russell Means once travelled on an Iroquois Nation passport. At base it is just an internationally recognized travel document.
As to where you can stay for more than a few months at a time… aye, there’s the rub!
Even those stateless by intent? In that case, why don’t all the paperless “asylum seekers” and ragtag and bobtails breaching America’s and Britain’s borders simply get UN passports and save themselves the trouble of sneaking in?
As to an Iroquois Nation passport, the Western world is now so cowed by the Thought Fascists that it would be a brave ticket agent who challenged the legitmacy of such a document if presented with a straight face.
Why would Russell Means travel on an Iroquois passport? He’s Lakota, they weren’t one of the Six Nations…
Minor nit.
The Six Nations were actually Iroquois (Mohawks,
Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Seneca, and
Tuscaroras.)
Lakotas are Sioux which are more of a plains
people (and incidentally were one of the great
warrior tribes of human history.) The Iroquios,
on the other hand inhabited New England/Upstate
New York.
This human shield business is SO much fun for an old-time JAG. Protected persons who intentionally abuse their status to shield military targets are war criminals. Thus, if they are not first shot, they can be captured and. . .shot.
I smell a Darwin Award in their future.
Lou-
Can US/Brit Servicemen sue the Saddamistas
in civil court if than can prove that they were put
in greater than expected harm due to their actions
e.g. having to bomb from lower altitude to ensure
precision?
Can they be brought on criminal charges in the
event that they are present for the death in action
of any servicemen in the way a bank robber is a
murderer if a death occurs in the comission of his
crime?
these gobshites are just EVIL. they are no different than if they were traveling to nazi germany to “shield” nazi targets from allied bombing.