A cult of life

The “baby boomer” generation, when we were young, read tales of World War II, seeming distant to young minds but actually quite proximate. As close as the dreadful events of September 11, 2001, are to the current crop of kids, who view it as history, something which happened before they were born, or before they remember. So was World War II to us.

We read of grinding land wars in Africa and Europe. Of swirling naval battles and island campaigns in the Pacific. We read of the Holocaust, and the unthinkable cruelty of the Nazis to those viewed as “other.” We read of the fate of Allied prisoners imprisoned by harsh Japanese captors. And how seventy years ago this summer, it was all brought to a just and satisfactory conclusion.

There were many tales of heroism, from the small theater of a Marine falling on a hand grenade to save his buddies to the riveting drama of Jimmy Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo. While militarily insignificant, the raid was the first truly good news of the Pacific campaign, that Japan was vulnerable to attack.

But as the war shuddered to its inevitable conclusion, there were disturbing accounts of desperation, of Japanese volunteers who willingly gave up their lives. Waves of kamikaze pilots, nearly 4,000 in number, attacked Allied ships with what amounted to human-guided, flying bombs. Kamikaze, “divine wind,” was a deeply foreign concept to young Western minds.

Perhaps from our foundation as a free country based on individual liberty, and certainly shaped by religion, we believed in the sanctity of human life. We admired heroism, but cheered the hero who survived as much as one who lost his life in an heroic act. The Marine falling on a grenade was deeply respected, but we did not expect thousands to do so. We would rather they would fight, win the battle, prosecute the war, and come home to take jobs and father children and mow the lawn and go to church on Sunday. We did not expect, nor would we admire, mass suicide.

If we had a cult, it was a cult of life. Death would come in God’s time, not ours.

But here we are, seventy years later, after the Japanese kamikaze waves proved ineffective, with a new cult of death.

We are now in a struggle with Islamic extremists, who twist their religion to justify their war on the West and Western values. Al-Qaeda, ISIS (or ISIL ), and Boko Haram are all examples of this theologically twisted philosophy. They share several fundamental features:

• A blind intolerance for other beliefs. Convert or die.
• Patriarchal and cruel. Women have no rights, gays are put to death.
• Regular use of suicide attackers. Your reward is in paradise, not on Earth.
• Unbelievable brutality. Kidnapping, torture, beheading, immolation, the more gruesome the better.
• Worldwide domination as a goal. International operations are underway, with recent attacks in France, Canada, Belgium, Australia, and the United States, among others.

What could be more antithetical to Western beliefs and culture?

And yet, and yet… we dither in the goal of containing a nuclear Iran. We stand by as the ISIL-declared Caliphate grows in Africa. We continue to avert our eyes… the Fort Hood terrorist attack is officially termed “workplace violence,” its victims denied crucial medical benefits. We refuse to openly recognize the Islamic roots of the enemy. A fringe, twisted, extremist Islamic belief system, but one with millions of supporters.

One only hopes that the next president, whoever he or she is, will recognize the existential nature of this struggle. That if we truly believe in the equality of women, gay rights, and the freedom of expression and religion, there is no accommodation that can be made, no moral equivalence that can be argued. It is time that we clearly state what we stand for: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is foundational. It is who we are.

Let’s only hope that January, 2017, is not too late.