PrintSeptember 14, 2007
One Iraqi Life
Reporting any news of G.I.s killed in Iraq is a proven way for the media to stir up the American public's feelings of exasperation with the war. Lately, given the noticeable drop in American casualties, they have been taken to task with trying to arouse the same level of disgust from our wearied nation by reporting on the prodigious number of Iraqi civilian casualties that typically ensue in the wake of a suicide bomber's serendipitous urge to redeem his ticket of entry into his presumed harem in paradise, while on the side Democrats assist by anteing the Iraqi benchmarks game.
But the cold, hard, painful truth is that aside for the spurious lamentation from disingenuous liberals pontificating on the immeasurable value of every human life, news of Iraqi war casualties are of little consequence to most Americans. After all, we do harbor a healthy, tribal kinship for our native sons and daughters presently giving their all for what sometimes appear to be a rather indifferent people who are seldom appreciative of the sacrifice that is being made for them.
Thus when we hear that one innocent Iraqi civilian has been killed by a suicide bomber it is almost taken for granted that we are not witnessing what is to be necessarily perceived as an extraordinary occurrence. When followed by the menagerie of atrocities that are periodically committed by these devout jihadists, the death of one Iraqi citizen beckons as much interest as a forlorn tree which silently falls in a dense primeval forest.
But it is also true that the reasons and the circumstances under which a sacrifice is made often define the true magnitude of that sacrifice, such as the selfless act of one unnamed Iraqi man that recently used his body as a shield against a suicide bomber who aspired to kill a group of American soldiers.
Although it may at first seem like a drop in the ocean, set against the backdrop of a war that has sorely tested the endurance of the few American and Iraqi faithful who long to see meaningful change in that war torn country, the death of this one man is profoundly significant.
In a war that has been marked by what could best be described as the media and the terrorists' complicit attempts to deliberately magnify the importance of what, in truth, is rather trivial, and trivialize that which in reality is of supreme importance, the scarcity of reporting on the death of one man would signal more the passing of a very insignificant event rather than a pivotal milestone; and the incessant calls from the democrats for a speedy withdrawal would not appear that much more grotesque in light of this truly noble sacrifice.
But the unseen truth is altogether different.
In a deeper sense, this man posthumously apprehended the core and full force of Patrick Henry's war cry, that death is preferable to the mere semblance of a life lived under a tyrannous theocracy that is the grand vision of only a few overambitious barbarians.
And perhaps this man who gave his life for the American soldiers has also planted a seed.
Amidst the perpetual tensions of a few power hungry factions on both sides of the religious divide, and the puerile squabbling and political posturing of some career politicians here at home, this man's death offers us a glimpse to the emergence of something new; something radically opposed to the ancestral paradigm which values a severely disjointed strand of martyrdom, and seeks to replace it with the unsullied and charitable notion that it is a most fitting sacrifice to offer your life for the sake of a worthy principle like the freedom of others.
We may be tempted to believe that what made his sacrifice important is the fact that he died as a substitute for those who are of much greater value to the cause; yet he was actually dying for posterity.
The soldiers spared in the blast were to him guardians of the way which would lead his country in the best direction, and the ideal that he was dying for was none other than that of a free, democratic Iraq.
I for one can not think of a nobler legacy toward that day in which children living in a free Iraq will pay tribute to the heroic offering of one of their own as one of the key decisive moments in which their war torn country made a turn for the better.
