We are all waiting for the three Japanese nationals to be released soon, within 12 hours hopefully.

The three civilians are Noriaki Imai, 18, a freelance writer from Sapporo, Soichiro Koriyama, 32, a freelance photojournalist from Tokyo, and Nahoko Takato, 34, a volunteer worker from Chitose, Hokkaido. We all hope they return back safely, without any physical harm inflicted upon them.

While such an incident might deter some people from going into the war-torn land, it should also give some ambition to some people to dedicate a part of their efforts and life to go and help out the children and civilians over there who need help. Chances come and go, and with every chance there is a risk. Taking risks paves a way to achieve something, which these three wanted to achieve. They knew there would be risks, even then they opted to go ahead and take the risks. They have been affected a bit emotionally, that is for sure, but it was probably worth the risk in their minds, or maybe it was not. Either way, such an incident should surely not make people turn their backs on such humanitarian efforts which people are undertaking in a land completely foreign to them, risking their lives for people from whom they would probably never get anything in return, whether anything of materialistic value or even anything emotionally, except probably fear of death or some other horror.

Should such an action cause the government to think more about its decision on Iraq? Of course, however, it is not easy to take out all the troops within three days notice, even if the fight or the mission in Iraq is not worth the three innocent lives. Does that mean that the government should not pull out the troops? Of course not. This is a case of being simply stuck there because of being sworn in as an ally. Majority of the country wants the troops back. A real democracy would result in the troops coming back. However, before we look at other ideal democratic nations, whether or not they want to be called democratic, we have to look in our own backyard, and even ourselves.