Just wondering if you’d heard the news?
Probably not.
It was a small story.
Concerned the human shields who’d gone to Iraq.
The ones who'd planned to place their bodies in harm’s way for the sake of peace.
Good people likely. Against war. Want peace. Like just about everyone I know –- liberal, conservative, male, female, old, young, or whatever.
However, being good people who are against war and who want peace does not always go hand-in-hand with making good decisions.
For example, offering your body as a shield to the regime of a madman doesn’t move the "really good thinking" meter much off the peg.
I digress.
I was wondering if you'd heard the news?
About the human shields who'd gone to Iraq.
The ones who'd planned to place their bodies in harm's way for the sake of peace.
It seems that quite a few of them are now home feeling used, angry, and disillusioned. That's because they found out that Saddam Hussein and his merry murderers actually planned to use them as, well, human shields.
He'd planned to use them as the human version of the back wall of a shooting gallery.
He'd planned to let them be heat signatures for infra-red seeker heads.
He'd planned to let them be the "X" markers in a target's ten ring.
As an aside, one wonders which of the following thoughts crossed Saddam’s mind after hearing of the shields:
"I know they're on our side. I know they believe our cause is just. I know that the sheer energy of their passion will uplift my spirits in my hour of need. Regrettably, they are not combatants and I cannot, in the name of humanity and compassion, allow this."
Or, might it have been something like this:
"Can you believe this? And I don't even have to force them at gunpoint like I do my own citizens."
Alas, for many, it was not to be.
For amidst the human shields were individuals like Nathan Chapman who'd said he was going to Iraq out of "principle" and "if this means dying, so be it."
However, after discovering Saddam didn't care if he became a somewhat gory mist, Nathan "if this means dying, so be it" Chapman decided to decamp for Amman, Jordan –- miles removed from any possible target –- "to help in the operation from there."
Others left for more compelling reasons.
John Ross, an American former shield, told reporters, "Basically, they (the Iraqis) said we are not going to feed you any longer and ordered the shields to take up their stations at electricity plants, communication facilities, and other such sites." Mr. Ross had wanted to station himself in front of either a school, an orphanage, or a hospital –- all well known targets of American war planners.
A more gripping case was that of Rev. Kenneth Johnson –- a member of a Japanese human shield delegation –- who reported to United Press that the people in Iraq he'd interviewed on camera and away from the Iraqi goon squads "told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start."
Johnson stated that he finally came to the realization that Saddam is "a monster the likes of which had not seen since Stalin and Hitler." He further said that "Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products so the (torturers) could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from head to foot."
Another former shield, Daniel Pepper, admitted that he was "less interested in standing up for (Iraqis’) rights than protesting against the U.S. and UK governments." After several weeks in Baghdad and a very pointed and enlightening discussion with an Iraqi cab driver, however, he developed "a strong desire to see Saddam removed."
Many other human shields decamped after they accused Iraqi authorities of trying to use them as pawns. Apparently, many had experienced an epiphany. For them, the bright, shining light of common sense finally broke through the shroud of naiveté. Presented with the lunacy of being nothing more than the propaganda tools of a madman, they decided to leave.
And the whole situation gives us reason for pause.
That's because there are still others willing to do the same to help "stop the war" and -– effectively -– save the regime of a man who gasses his own people, invades other countries, has women raped in front of their families, dissenters' heads wrapped in gasoline-soaked towels and burned to death, sons crucified in front of mothers, and whose forces machine gun refugees from his cities.
All of which makes you wonder about the irony contained in the refrain of an old anti-war song.
"When will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?"