Julius Caesar

Act II. Scene II.

ln 37

Ceasar:

Cowards die many times before their deaths;

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard.

It seems to me most strange that men should fear;

Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come when it will come.

Ecclesiastes 9:12

For man also knoweth not his time:

As the fishes that are taken in an evil net,

and as the birds that are caught in the snare;

So are the sons of men snared in an evil time,

when it falleth suddenly upon them.

I don’t need lessons in the meaning of the word callous unless you want to add being patronising to the list alongside callousness. The callous nature of the captor’s crimes do not excuse your callous condemnations of the victim. It’s like criticising a terminal patient for their struggle for breath. Do not dare assume, from the comfort of your switchboard, the conditions which led to Margaret Hassan and Paul Bigley making their pleas. Don’t dare assume you know their innermost thoughts and can conclude they are cowards and that you would be sure to behave differently. Have you been threatened, Thibaud? Have you passed this personal test?

Terrye, before you ask the Father to forgive them for knowing not what to do, be sure of your own forgiveness.

What do you expect from the press? That they should suppress reporting of the victim and family pleas because it puts undue pressure on the government. Do you even know what personal rights we are defending against such blackmail? Where would we draw the line? I have not seen any major news agency do other than present the facts and the circumstances- they are not campaigning to have the hostages freed. There would be no courage in Mr. Blair resisiting pleas heard in private. It is only in the crucible of public opinion that his resolve can and will be tested.

Finally, I hope the confidence of your contributors is justified and Mrs. Hassan is spared because it was a hoax all along but I doubt it. I fervently hope that the callous bastards who cavilled about her here never have to see themselves or one of their own (since they have been so quick to exclude Mrs. Hassan from that grouping), in this situation.

Mrs Hassan herself was vehemently opposed to UN sanctions on Iraq and addresses a House of Commons committee on the subject.

As for the deployment of British troops,this from news.independent.com.

The 850-strong 1st battalion (Black Watch), including three companies of armoured infantry, totalling some 500 men, equipped with 50 Warrior armoured troop carriers, is being ordered to hold an approach road into Fallujah, where extremists including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ≠ who is believed to have murdered Kenneth Bigley ≠ are thought to have their strongholds.

They had met while studying in London and the former Margaret Fitzsimmons, from Dublin …..She converted to Islam, learned Arabic and took Iraqi citizenship.” BBC Fri 22 Oct

This is not specifically a British problem, where as Ken Bigley was seen as a jack the lad scouser the British public will not see Margaret Hassan in the same sympathetic light.

Is her husband not making an appeal to the Iraqi Provisional Government? It is after all their government and she is being held hostage in Iraq.

The timing of this, when the British strategic reserve is due to replace US troops in Baghdad, allowing those troops to redeploy in Falujah,seems somewhat contrived.

Did they perhaps make a mistake by killing Ken Bigley too soon,perhaps because of his escape attempt, and were desperate for anyone remotely British to take hostage?

Perhaps Zarqawi is not as controlled as he is made out to be,uncontrolled blood lust in a comander is a fatal flaw.

OK, a lot to read into the audio, but I got that impression quite strongly.

It was odd that she appealed to the British people to put pressure on Tony Blair, rather than to Blair himself – unless she thinks that is more likely to get results, an amazingly thoughtful tactic given her position.

And somehow, the “That’s why people like Mr Bigley and myself are being caught” line strikes me as argument, not plea.

The entire statement is rather poetic – or as Charlie (CO) pointed out before , melodramatic. It sounds well rehearsed.

Her husband’s statements make me even more suspicious. They accuse Blair in an incredibly illogical way of creating the situation by stating that the British government would try to gain her release, imply that it will be his fault if she dies, and say that Blair must now meet the demands of the terrorists as though that would surely save her life.

Maybe he’s just a distraught husband. Maybe she’s just a natural actress. Maybe she just happens to be sympathetic to the cause of her captors, and when they said “you’ve been taken because British troops might move into the area of Baghdad” she thinks that’s probably true. Maybe she was told what to say and that she had better make it sound real. But if someone had the poor taste to lay even odds, I’d match them and bet that she is in on this thing.

Callous is the man who can cut off someone’s head and caper about the body. Callous is backshooting children. Callous is dancing in the streets when you hear that 3,000 people have been killed in America.

We all hope we will die with courage. Some of us would die defiantly like the Italian. I do think that the media reaction to Bigley and his begging for his life and his last words “Tony Blair did not do enough for me” make these kinds of abductions more likely because it makes them more effective. They are a propaganda tool.

I had a client through my work that had spent 36 months in a Japanese POW camp. He saw thousands of Americans die in captivity. He spoke of the nurses that were murdered by the Japanese in the Philipines and he said they did not beg. He looked at me and he said “All you give the bastards is name rank and serial number’. Of course they were military people and trained to expect death. But thanks to the tactics of the enemy no one in Iraq is safe and we all hope that if we found ourselves in such a place we would show courage or grace or something that would not make our death a recruiting tool.

Perhaps one could say Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.

Not much of a market for that in the Jihadi world.