In
this Vanity Fair Column, Christopher Hitchens tells the story of 2nd Lt. Mark Daily, who was killed in Iraq by an IED 15 Jan. 2007. Hitchens was badly shaken by this particular death, because he may have been partially responsible for it.
In a way, the story was almost too perfect: this handsome lad had been born on the Fourth of July, was a registered Democrat and self-described agnostic, a U.C.L.A. honors graduate, and during his college days had fairly decided reservations about the war in Iraq. I read on, and actually printed the story out, and was turning a page when I saw the following:
"Somewhere along the way, he changed his mind. His family says there was no epiphany. Writings by author and columnist Christopher Hitchens on the moral case for war deeply influenced him … "
I don't exaggerate by much when I say that I froze. I certainly felt a very deep pang of cold dismay. I had just returned from a visit to Iraq with my own son (who is 23, as was young Mr. Daily) and had found myself in a deeply pessimistic frame of mind about the war. Was it possible that I had helped persuade someone I had never met to place himself in the path of an I.E.D.? Over-dramatizing myself a bit in the angst of the moment, I found I was thinking of William Butler Yeats, who was chilled to discover that the Irish rebels of 1916 had gone to their deaths quoting his play Cathleen ni Houlihan. He tried to cope with the disturbing idea in his poem "Man and the Echo":
Did that play of mine send out
Certain men the English shot? …
Could my spoken words have checked
That whereby a house lay wrecked?
...as I wrote to his parents, I was quite prepared for them to resent me. So let me introduce you to one of the most generous and decent families in the United States, and allow me to tell you something of their experience.
In the midst of their own grief, to begin with, they took the trouble to try to make me feel better. I wasn't to worry about any "guilt or responsibility": their son had signed up with his eyes wide open and had "assured us that if he knew the possible outcome might be this, he would still go rather than have the option of living to age 50 and never having served his country. Trust us when we tell you that he was quite convincing and persuasive on this point, so that by the end of the conversation we were practically packing his bags and waving him off." This made me relax fractionally, but then they went on to write: "Prior to his deployment he told us he was going to try to contact you from Iraq. He had the idea of being a correspondent from the front-lines through you, and wanted to get your opinion about his journalistic potential. He told us that he had tried to contact you from either Kuwait or Iraq. He thought maybe his e-mail had not reached you … " That was a gash in my hide all right: I think of all the junk e-mail I read every day, and then reflect that his precious one never got to me.
...I have now talked to a good number of those who knew Mark Daily or were related to him, and it's clear that the country lost an exceptional young citizen, whom I shall always wish I had had the chance to meet. He seems to have passed every test of young manhood, and to have been admired and loved and respected by old and young, male and female, family and friends. He could have had any career path he liked (and won a George C. Marshall Award that led to an offer to teach at West Point). Why are we robbed of his contribution?
Vanity FairGo to the article and read the whole thing. Mark Daily was a man who should be known for who he was, in his own words. To Hitchens' credit, he limits his personal wallowing in guilt, and allows 2nd Lt. Daily to speak for himself.
Anyone who has followed the milblogs understands that as special as Lt. Daily was, he was not terribly out of the mainstream of the young men who have died in Iraq. The US military is currently meeting its enlistment quotas in all its service branches. The men and women going to Iraq and Afghanistan to fight could make more money elsewhere, almost all of them with significantly less risk. They, like Lt. Daily have consciously chosen to risk their lives by enlisting during wartime, because in overwhelming numbers they believe in the mission of the US led coalition.
Hitchens, for all his self-absorption, did not invent the ideas he published concerning the dangers of islamo-fascism. His writings are of high quality, but perhaps not the highest, and certainly he is far from alone in raising the alarm against allowing jihadis free run of the middle east and Asia.
Death is an inevitable consequence of war, and some particular deaths may touch us personally in ways almost too harsh to abide. If a war is worth fighting, it is worth fighting even if very bright and worthy men and women may die.
In this case, of course, the war in question is not Iraq. The war in question is the greater war against the religious jihadi movement for a world-wide caliphate. Iraq is merely a battle within the war. The war itself is being carried out in London, Paris, Madrid, rural Virginia, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Nigeria--on every continent and in virtually every nation.
Mr. Hitchens, if you are too weak to see this larger war through, this long, long war--you may certainly bow out any time you like. The Mark Daily's go to fight because they believe it is the right thing to do. They will continue to go to fight--and some will come home in flag-draped coffins--even if you choose to put your particular burden down.
Life contains many trials by fire. Some face them very early in life. Some are allowed to wait until middle age or later.
Bin Laden's glorious revolution has not been doing very well lately.
