Legacy Matters

Every Citizen is a Soldier in the War against Terrorism

There is an extremely distressing video of Margaret Hassan, the kidnaped director of CARE International in Iraq. Terrified and haggard, she weeps and pleads for her life and begs Prime Minister Blair to save her life by taking British troops out of Iraq. By all accounts, Margaret Hassan is an admirable woman directing humanitarian efforts in Iraq for the past 30 years and a naturalized Iraqi citizen. My heart goes out to her and her family for the suffering they must be enduring.

I'm disturbed by her plight, but also by her reaction to her plight. It seems as if we've been bombarded by images of hostages pleading for their lives and it's become clear that hostage-taking and beheadings are a barbaric, yet astute, political tactic adopted by terrorists. So long as the victim is captured on tape pleading for help, the initial emotional reaction of most people is to identify with the victim and demand that everything be done to save the unfortunate hostage. I believe that every citizen is a soldier in the war against terrorism and I believe that we are responsible to all our fellow humans not to do anything that would make it more likely that others will suffer a similar fate. Special pleading, even for one's own life, has a small, even craven quality about it.

Mark Steyn in The Quality of Mersey, a politically incorrect column about the mawkish British reaction to the kidnapping of Kenneth Bigley, pointed out that "A war cannot be subordinate to the fate of any individual caught up in it." Steyn wrote, "Consider Fabrizio Quattrocchi, murdered in Iraq on April 14th. In the moment before his death, he yanked off his hood and cried defiantly, “I will show you how an Italian dies!” He ruined the movie for his killers," James Robbins called it Moments of Truth.

The enemy we face today would have to rise far to earn even our contempt. Fabrizio's captors wanted not just to kill him, but to humiliate him, the true mark of the savage. However, they needed his cooperation, and Fabrizio knew it. He was beyond help, but not helpless. He was alive. He could still choose, if only to choose the manner in which he would die. Consider the bravery, the nobility, the strength of that act. In his final moments, facing eternity, willfully discarding the shred of hope that maybe it would not happen, maybe he would get out of it alive, shouting defiance in the masked faces of his captors and denying the barbarous cowards intent on murdering him the satisfaction of his complicity in their crime.

If you are faced with certain death, it's far better to go out bravely like Yanis Kanidis or Fabrizio Quattrocchi . You will die a hero not a victim.
Like the passengers on United Flight 93.

In the words of Tecumseh, the great Shawnee Indian chief
" When it comes time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home." 

 

Posted by Jill Fallon at October 23, 2004 12:45 PM | Permalink