My first impression of this Marine's letter to al Qaeda about the kidnap of Marine Corporal Hassoun was that it was intended to frighten the kidnappers. And my first thought about that was that the kidnappers would be unlikely to be frightened by mere death, and the Marines would be unlikely to do more, being rather decent guys. So, much as I admired the sentiment and sympathized with the emotion I saw the letter as rather futile.. at first.
But thinking about it a little more deeply it occured to me that it wasn't about frightening the kidnappers with physical injury or death, but about destroying their reason for being, their "great love." It, essentially, said: "The best (worst) you can do will just inspire us to destroy that which your heart is bound to more quickly, and to wipe the primary object of your love and devotion from the face of the earth." Because totalitarians are in love. They are enraptured with an ideal of perfection, and with the closest earthly manifestation of that perfection: mass murder, death, enslavement, torture, the control of all thought and action under the influence of "the beloved" (whether in the form of a blood cult, a "pure collective," or a seventh century caliphate souped up on interpretive western philosophy). And these particular totalitarians don't actually intend to be around for the inauguration of their beautific vision, because they see themselves only as the vanguards. That's what can be taken from them.
What they fear isn't death, it's rational life, human freedom and precisely the sort of society that the Marines are helping to create in Iraq through their military excellence, and programs like the Spirit of America. What the al Qaedists (and also the Ba'athists) fear is that their vision will, like chattel slavery at the end of the 19th Century, be tossed carelessly on the ash heap of history before their eyes, and that nothing will remain of their great love, valued beyond family or life itself, but regret...
And so David C's letter was a fitting promise: "You will be vanguards of nothing."
Posted by Demosophist at June 29, 2004 02:48 AM | TrackBack