The cruel murder of 54-year-old Tom Fox, a self-described peace activist kidnapped by terrorists in Baghdad on Nov. 26, was a dastardly deed, and his family and friends deserve all condolences. Fox was, by all accounts, a devoted family man who played in the Marine Corps band and also a deeply religious Quaker. There is, however, a ghastly irony about it all–for Fox, a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (that’s the outfit that decided to be “human shields” when we rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein) was on a mission marked by profound, nearly incomprehensible delusion about what Islamofascist terrorism is all about and who the real villains in Iraq are. The news reports about the discovery of Fox’s body on Feb. 10 make it clear that he wasn’t just shot but beaten with electric cords before he died. As The Autonomist comments (hat tip: Michelle Malkin):
“… Fox also harbored hatred for his culture and an overall disdain for America, as indicated by statements on his blog. He also suffered from a terrible naivete: ‘I think it would be fair to say that a survey of opinion taken from news sources in various parts of the world would find people using the words “fear and hatred” much more often than they would use the words ‘respect and love’ when it comes to describing the United States. Not only in the Middle East but in Europe and in much of Asia and other areas as well. We are seen more as an empire rather than a beacon of hope to the oppressed and downtrodden. We are seen more as a militaristic superpower, bent on imposing our will on others, rather than the keeper of the flame of the hope and promise of democracy,’ said Thomas William Fox, missing the fact that people fear America so much, that they flock to its shores in droves, seeking freedom and peace and economic opportunity.
‘After reading most of his blog entries, it seems to me that Tom Fox’s tragic flaw, the one that ultimately got him killed, was that he did not really believe that some men are more evil than others.
“Crippled by this moral confusion, Fox habitually ignored the greater of two evils.”
Fox’s last post on his blog–on Nov. 8, 2005, just two weeks before he was kidnapped–described a visit to Fallujah (that’s the place where the terrorist murdered a bunch of Americans in 2004, then burned their bodies and stuck the charred sticks of their remains up on a bridge for all to ridicule):
“A city that has been demonized by Americans and many Iraqis, using the words ‘the city of terrorists.’ A city that its residents call ‘the city of mosques.’ A city that even its residents have to enter at checkpoints, often taking up to an hour to traverse. A city that is being choked to death economically by those same checkpoints.
“CPTers and a member of the Muslim Peacemaker Teams came to Fallujah to meet with friends and contacts to ask them if the city was planning on doing something in remembrance of the tragic events of last November when U.S. forces attacked their city of 300,000 to root out, by U.S. estimates, 1,500 terrorists.
“What we heard in response were words of remembrance, resistance and resilience. The cleric said that a number of civic leaders had come to him with a proposal for an action in remembrance of the anniversary. Their proposal was to raise funds to contribute to relief efforts for the victims of the earthquake in Pakistan. He said that a teaching of Islam is to always look to aid others in need before asking for aid yourself.
“The cleric said that he recently traveled to another Middle Eastern country and during his visit he met with a cleric from Libya. The Libyan cleric said that in his city, and in other places in Libya, parents are naming newborn girls ‘Fallujah’ in honor of the city.”
Did it ever occur to Fox that they might be naming the girls “Fallujah” because they thought it was really cool in Libya to kill innocent Americans and then desecrate their bodies?
The horrible irony is that this man who undoubtedly thought that we were “torturing” innocent people when some some out-of-line soldiers made some suspected terrorists prance around naked at Abu Graib discovered at the end of his life what real torture was like, and who the folks were who tortured. He also discovered that there are some people who think it quite manly to murder in cold blood a harmless man old enough to be their father. It was a sad day for Tom Fox, and the days must be sadder still for his family. May he rest in peace.