For the humanitarian agency, the blast shattered the belief that 23 years of good deeds in Iraq could be worn like protective armor against violence. "We were always confident that people knew us and that our work here would protect us," said Nada Doumani, spokeswoman for the Red Cross in Baghdad. "How do we understand this?"Yep, it's real tough -- unless you realize that the terrorist scum who perpetrate these atrocities really are evil. I guess some people get a little giddy up on that cloud of high-minded "neutrality." Earth to the Red Cross: you are not in a local conflict between two warring tribes. You are in the middle of a conflict whose other side doesn't even recognize the concepts you hold most sacred, and will kill you, me, and even its own family members to achieve its goals. The people fighting on behalf of the U.S. are also fighting on your behalf, whether you admit it or not. Get that through your skulls, already.
What high-minded cranically-impacted arrogance: sure, Arab terrorists can gun down Israeli children in their beds, but they would never dare touch the precious do-gooders at the ICRC! Welcome to reality -- better late than never, I guess, and try not to stub your toes.
I don't mean to completely trash the Red Cross -- they do good work, often risking their own lives, and occasionally pay with those lives. It's also grossly unfair to rip the front-line workers for the political cynicism of their headquarters-bound bureaucrat masters. Nonetheless, the sanctimonious belief that they should be above these kinds of conflicts, and the naivete of thinking that only "bad" people get attacked by terrorists -- with all that implies about our soldiers -- simply disgusts me.
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