Here is an interesting piece in the Sunday Australian revealing the split within the infidel ranks over Christian pacifism.
Freed British hostage Norman Kember arrived home at the weekend, and tried to defuse a row over his response to the SAS mission that rescued him.
Speaking at Heathrow airport after being reunited with his wife Pat, the retired professor of medical physics issued a statement to address criticism that he had failed to thank his rescuers.
“I do not believe a lasting peace is achieved by armed force, but I pay tribute to their courage and thank those who played a part in my rescue,” he said.
Mr Kember was responding to remarks by General Mike Jackson, chief of the British general staff, who suggested he had failed to thank the SAS and other troops for rescuing him and two other hostages after four months in captivity.
Before his capture, Mr Kember had said that if he were kidnapped he did not want to be rescued by the military. Thanking the people of many faiths who had prayed for his release, Mr Kember said the world should focus on the plight of the ordinary suffering Iraqis…
Sources close to the SAS said the peace activists who sponsored Mr Kember’s visit to Iraq repeatedly failed to co-operate with special forces trying to locate and rescue him. They said that after he was kidnapped last November, the religious group declined to provide information that could have helped find him.
Well-placed sources said members of the Canadian group in Baghdad failed to provide the SAS with the number of the mobile phone Mr Kember was using on the day he was kidnapped, which could have helped trace his last movements.
Doug Pritchard, co-director of the CPT worldwide, said the group had refused to meet any of the military rescue team, preferring to deal with diplomats.
“We said from the outset we didn’t want a military raid and we wouldn’t work with the military,” he said. Relations with the British embassy became tense after members of the group told officials it was reluctant to enter the green zone, and declined to allow diplomats with military escorts to visit their offices outside the zone…