Cheap Compassion

I guess people who are faced with a situation like those mothers can hardly be blamed for what they are doing on a gut-feeling level, but do they REALLY think that their appeal will change the mind of the murderous scum that kidnapped their sons one little bit? For heaven's sake, was Margaret Hassan, who was 'executed' by shooting her at point blank, intending to harm Iraq? Was any of the other many victims murdered in Iraq, for that?

German mothers plead for Iraq hostages' lives
Thu Feb 2, 2006 11:49 AM EST

BERLIN (Reuters) - The mothers of two German hostages kidnapped in Iraq made emotional pleas for their sons' lives on Thursday as the government said it was still trying to make contact with their captors.

The mothers of Rene Braeunlich and Thomas Nitzschke were filmed by ARD television making an appeal which was due to be shown later by Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera.

"We have seen our sons on television. We are very afraid for their lives," said one of the women, whose names and location were not given.

"Thomas and Rene travelled to Iraq with no political motive. They never intended to harm your country. We appeal to your charity and mercy and ask you with all our hearts to spare our innocent sons. Please, let Thomas and Rene go free," said the other mother, her voice almost breaking.

The two engineers were abducted on January 24 outside their workplace in the Iraqi industrial town of Baiji, 180 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad.

"As far as the work of the crisis center is concerned, I can tell you we are obviously still in the process of establishing contact" with the hostage-takers, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Thursday, declining to give further details.

An evening vigil for the two men was planned in their home region of Saxony, where local people placed flowers and lit candles throughout the day at a church in the city of Leipzig.

In a video dated January 29 and broadcast by Al Jazeera on Tuesday, the kidnappers set a 72-hour deadline for Germany to end its cooperation with Iraq and close its embassy.

The tape of the two kidnapped German engineers showed them next to masked individuals who pointed automatic rifles at them.

For the whole article click HERE.

Instead of staging another one of those unbearable candlelight vigils the people of Germany better ought to distance themselves from Muslim atrocities. One holds candlelight vigils (if one really can't suppress the urge, but who knows, maybe it's a sort of mental diarrhoea) for the ill or otherwise grief-stricken. The two men in Iraq are neither. They are crime victims and victims of crime can expect active solidarity and denunciation of the perpetrators, not some soppy and noncommittal garbage that has only one effect: to make the participants feel better. Where is the outrage? And if we really HAVE to have candlellight vigils: Where were they when Daniel Pearl's head was cut off or Margaret Hassan was shot? To name just two of the many victims of Islamist terrorists. But then, they had been no convicted murderers about to be executed by the evil Americans.

And thank you, Osthoff and German government, for paving the way for more blackmail, kidnapping and murder. Sure there are some more terrorists waiting to be released in German prisons? Not to speak of those excessive million Euro to fill the coffers for the good cause of destroing the West.

I'm sure those candlelight vigils at stoning-to-death sites will be really cute!