March 17, 2003
THE WAGES OF HATE:
'She felt it was something she had to do' (Janine DeFao, March 17, 2003, San Francisco Chronicle)In an e-mail to her family on Feb. 7, two weeks after her arrival in the Gaza Strip, Rachel Corrie wrote that "no amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing . . . could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here."Corrie, a 23-year-old Washington state college student described by her friends as a committed peace activist, was killed Sunday by a bulldozer while in Gaza protesting the demolition of Palestinian houses by the Israelis. [...]
Corrie's friends remembered her Sunday as an inspired, courageous and responsible peace activist.
"She actually told me she was inspired to become a peace activist by the World Trade Center bombing on Sept. 11," said Will Hewitt, who watched in horror Sunday as a bulldozer crushed his friend. The two friends were part of a group of human shields protecting homes from demolition. "If you can understand people who are different than you, you can help resolve the conflict."
Corrie strived to build a bridge of understanding between the Palestinians and her hometown of Olympia, Wash., by establishing a "sister city" relationship with pen pals and other connections, said her friend Phan Nguyen.
Corrie had arrived in Gaza on Jan. 24 and planned to stay three months, participating in projects from guarding the remaining water pump in the town of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip to standing in front of bulldozers.
Before leaving the United States, "she was afraid and nervous at the same time as being excited," said Nguyen, 28, a fellow Olympia peace activist who has made similar trips to the West Bank. "She felt it was something she had to do."
Nguyen described Corrie as a dedicated peace activist and organizer with the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace.
But "she wasn't a radical extremist," he said. "She wasn't someone who would participate in protests for the thrill of it. She wasn't reckless."
Here are a couple of touching photos of the non-reckless, courageous, bridge-builing, peace activist burning her nation's flag:
Posted by Orrin Judd at March 17, 2003 3:40 PM
This whole mess is senseless, tragic BS.
BTW are you sure the woman in the photos is Corrie?
Looks kind of different from some of the other pictures I've seen of her.
Ali:
I was dubious when I first saw the photos (at Free Republic). But check the one in the story at USA Today and she looks the same:
">http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-03-16-american-woman-killed_x.htm
I wonder if she ever considered shielding any of the Palestinians being summarily executed by the PA or Hamas.
Posted by: Robert D at March 17, 2003 5:15 PMOJ: With due respect, I disagree: These are not the wages of hate, but rather the wages of almost comic stupidity.
I know you're an evolution skeptic, but the argument that the least fit tend to survive less often seems particularly appropos here.
Chris:
You can't throw a rock without hitting someone this stupid--just take my word for that.
The truth hurts.
Posted by: RW at March 17, 2003 6:13 PMNotice how these "peace activists" weren't riding Israeli buses to act as human shields for children going to and from school. My guess is not one will be at any Passover meals to act as shields there. But I guess that's because they know they can count on the Israelis to act civilised and decent.
Posted by: Buttercup at March 17, 2003 6:20 PMOJ: I don't know about that many people who are this
stupid. This is heroic stupidity, stupidity on a special scale. This is the sort of stupidity that isn't content with merely mouthing idiotic platitudes, or calling Bush (or Ashcroft) a fascist, or even taking part in a march for fascism
peace; nay, this is stupidity that throws itself in the way of an oncoming armored bulldozer -- not unlike throwing oneself in the way of, say, a tank, but without a Molotov cocktail -- and expecting it to stop, because, after all, the one throwing himself in the way of the bulldozer is right
.
It is the gap between thinking that it would be better if more people knew how to build nuclear weapons, and building one by oneself -- then detonating it at close range.
Truly, this is something to regard with awe.
Butttercup's remarks, also anticipated by Damian Penny earlier today, say everything that needs to, or could be, said.
I note that Taranto at opinionjournal.com.best described her death as an accident, apparently (and unusually for him) without irony. I dunno. Throwing yourself under an operating bulldozer hardly qualifies as accident. Suicide? She's been in the land of happy suicides for a few months, drinking in the Zietgeist.
Harry:
Perhaps we need a new term for it: "justifiable suicide".
Orrin, I live in the 'Washington' where she was a college student - at a super liberal non conforming state college. Guess they don't teach that bull dozers can hurt - or her parents missed the lesson about not going into traffic?
Posted by: Pi Cheney at March 17, 2003 8:07 PMWe refer to it as Godforsaken Washington. :)
Posted by: oj at March 17, 2003 8:46 PMSince both the AP and Reuters have the file photos IDing the flag burner as Corrie, it's hard to see how both agencies would be wrong, especially since at the time they were taken, I'm sure she and others in her group had no problem giving their names to the photographers.
Not a good 36 hours for U.S.-haters. Aside from seeing Bush lay down the deadline for Saddam, the existance of these photos as the only picutres of Corrie alive while in the Middle East will negate any possible firestorm in the U.S. about her death. Had these pictures never existed and the posed All-American girl photo released Sunday been the only image of Corrie the American public ever saw, the potential image damage to the Israelis would have been far more severe.)
My grandfather taught me that the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius occasionally takes a break and does something stupid, while stupid is full time.
Posted by: JorgXMcKie at March 17, 2003 10:12 PMJohn:
Gocheck Google News and, as of a couple hours ago, you'll not find these photos nor any mention of them. The rest of the nation and the world will continue to portray her as a nice kid in over her head.
Her school in "godforsaken Washington" is Evergreen - the one that had cop-killer Mumia as their featured grad speaker (via radio from prison if I remember correctly) a few years ago. Living in the Seattle area I occasionally read about this "college", and I am not surprised this poor idiot went there. I dare anyone to find a more leftist brainwashing academy in the US.
Posted by: Pat H at March 17, 2003 11:34 PMYou know what they say, you lie down with dogs, you get run over by a bulldozer.
Posted by: Matt at March 18, 2003 1:37 AMAs some have proposed in other forums someone needs to create a Brian (no legs) Willson award for people like Corrine.
I went to a candlelite memorial service for Willson back when I was a High School lefty.
The great tragedy in this girl's death is that if she had lived another 10 or 20 years she might have discovered a clue somewhere.
JorgXMcKie;
I had heard it as "the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits".
OJ:
"Justified suicide" is a good term.
What do you think of "value-added suicide?"
Regards,
AUTHOR: Jeff Guinn
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DATE: 03/19/2003 12:11:00 PM
AUTHOR: Jeff Guinn
DATE: 3/19/2003 12:11:00 PM
pj has admonished me about imputing motives, but it's pretty easy to imagine several pathways by which she decided to get killed.
My suspicion is that, without too much premeditation, she decided that her death would galvanize others to hate America as much as she obviously did.
I understand her parents made a statement this morning, but I haven't seen what they said. "Where did we go wrong?" would have been good.
Reminds me of Ellen Goodman's son.