Boreal

What Some Young Men Are Dying For

In Memory

The West is asking its young men, like the SEALs who were part of the team which killed bin Laden and whose helicopter was later shot down in an unrelated mission, to fight and die for a sometimes obscure notion of liberty, freedom and human rights with no guarantee of an interesting sexual afterlife, or any afterlife at all.

The men they are fighting kill and die for the type of reward promised in the note of encouragement left behind by the leader of the 9/11 terrorists, Muhammad Atta:

Know that the gardens of paradise are waiting for you in all their beauty, and the women of paradise are waiting, calling out.

Can a so-called civilization which produces men who will cause so much death, suffering  and destruction on a god's promise of an eternity of debauchery be compared with one whose young men will selflessly give their lives to protect It, and us, because it is the moral and ethical thing to do?

We must never forget what this fight is all about:

The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions or a clash of civilization. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between rationality and barbarity. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on one hand and the violation of these rights on the other. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings …

Wafa Sultan, outspoken Syrian-American woman during a debate broadcast on Al-jazeera.

It is a fight we cannot afford to lose. Rest in Peace, you did good.

Bernard Payeur, August 8, 2011