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Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Heroes and lousy parents
The Bull Moose roars:A moving profile appears in the New York Times today of one such Iraqi,
"The doctor pulled a Czech pistol from his glove compartment on a recent day and walked into the mosque.
"His professional mission, he acknowledges, is to save lives, to treat the weak and infirm. But Dr. Riyadh N. al-Adhadh, a Sunni Arab, is also running for a Baghdad provincial council seat in the elections on Sunday.
"I've had this for one year, but only in the last two weeks have I started carrying it," the doctor said as he handed the pistol to a reporter. "I know it's useless. If they want to kill me, they will."
"But what if they said, instead, that we would be enslaved if we did not appropriate enough money for weaponry...And slavery would surely be a fate worse than death...."
"So Americans and Russians can both stand slavery, if they have to -- and still want life to go on and on."
"Could it be that slavery isn't a fate worse than death? After all, people are tough. Maybe we shouldn't send that message to the Pentagon -- about slavery and Kool-Aid time."
"But suppose enemies came ashore in great numbers...and they push us out of our homes and off our ancestral lands...Suppose that they even tried to destroy our religion..."
"Again: this is a wringer millions of Americans have already been through...It is another catastrophe Americans can endure, if they have to -- still, miraculously, maintaining some measure of dignity, of self-respect."
"As bad as life is for our Indians, they still like it better than death."
"So I haven't had much luck, have I, in identifying fates worse than death? Crucifixion is the only clear winner so far, and we aren't about to be crucified."
Back to Dr. Al-Adhadh.
Freedom demands heroes. Brave men and women to sacrifice their lives, if need be, for freedom. Liberty is wrenched from the hands of despots and petty tyrants. Liberty is not the natural state of mankind -- our natural state is disorder.
The story doesn't say whether Dr. Al-Adhadh has children. The story doesn't say whether his children would prefer to live in freedom as orphans or in slavery with their father.
Hammer wants to provide food and shelter and medical care for the Sisters Hammer. Hammer wants freedom for them, too, but would provide them nourishment before the right to vote.
Dr. Al-Adhadh is a brave man, risking his life to defend what he believes in. But is he a good father? Or does freedom demand that, as well -- the abandonment of your children to the world you leave them? That is, it seems, the fortunate case, because nothing -- not freedom, to be sure -- fills the emptiness when a child leaves a parent's world.
No answers here. Just a question to the wise.
