‘Human Shields’ Begin Deploying in Iraq is a news story worth talking about. I have almost no respect for people willing to die publicly in a war in which they do not want to fight through historically far more powerful means. Conscientious objectors, for the past 100 years, have risked their lives sitting in jail (and far worse) or otherwise protesting acts of violence against others. Their call to arms, especially during the Vietnam war and in the 1980s, speak about their private belief in a public forum – but they do so out of the preservation of (their own) lives, a living testament to the power of civil disobedience. In this case, human “shields” are not shielding anything from anyone – they simply put their own lives (and many others who shelter them) at risk without staking a claim on anything worth living for. Although they lay claim to high moral ground, ironically, they are the ultimate moral relativists, the penultimate cynics, wasters of life, and sadly are politically ineffective. I may be wrong, but they seem to me to be one step above suicide-homicide bombers.