Cody
Williams
Honor in Battle
I remembered my promise to take my three-year-old daughter to Chuck E. Cheese on Saturday, so, instead of catching the number 6 subway train to work I got on the bus heading into Midtown from Harlem.
Today, I didn't trust being underground.
Yesterday's bombings in London brought back 911 anxieties I thought were overcome. I thought about former friends and colleagues I once worked with at Marsh Inc. on the 97th floor of the World Trade Center with children the same age as mine who didn't make it home that blue sky September day: Dan Nolan, my boss, coworkers Kevin and Liz all left young children one morning to go to work and never returned home to keep promises to play catch, to share dinner, to read a story, to tuck their child in bed that night.
Games of war through much of history once had a strange civility. Women and children, generally, were kept at bay, out of harms way. Men came together face to face in combat and died on battlefields protecting their loyalties: liberty, country, land, honor, family and the fallen friends they stepped over to continue the fight.
The word soldier derives its honor from brave protectors who in the face of death walked defiantly into an opponent's bayonet, or charged swinging clubs or stones at the raised shield of a defender. The dead were buried in fields where they lay, fields where trees nourished by the blood of the fallen grew tall as monuments honoring bravery; fields like Juno, Gettysburg, Wounded Knee, Waterloo, Calvary.
War seemed to have had honor. Brave men took up common causes, put on uniforms and left those they loved to win or to lose in battle. They couldn't promise a return. But, they promised to defend, to fight. Chaotic and murderous as war was, lines were drawn. The battlefield was clearly marked. Fight valiantly, die courageously, and return home, living or dead, a hero.
Where is the valor in secretly planting a bomb to go off in a Madrid or London subway train crowded with unsuspecting civilians in the middle of a morning commute?
Where is the honor in overpowering a defenseless stewardess and flying an airplane into buildings packed with people given no chance to defend their selves?
Where is the glory in blowing up a Tel Aviv restaurant full of children eating ice-cream and lunchtime mothers nursing babies?
Maybe suicide bombers choose death because death is easier than facing the horror of their cowardice for months, years or a lifetime.
What cause is so worthy as to fight a war like this? What god merits so ungodly worship?
The Arab world and the Western world have been at odds for centuries, ever since Hannibal stormed the Alps with elephants and laid claim to Andalusia. After 800 years of Moorish rule Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain reclaimed Europe for the West. Arab bombings in Madrid, London and New York are just new skirmishes in the clashing of two great civilizations. History teaches us that civilizations often go to war. But, can war ever again be fought valiantly when a cause chooses terror as its chief weapon?
Terror's aim is to instill fear, shake the very foundation of a society built on trust.
We trust our neighbors will not harm us. We trust our government to protect us. We trust God to deliver us. Our children trust us to keep our promises that at the end of the day, at the end of the week, we will come home and take them to Chuck E. Cheese or kiss them good night
If our children can't trust, can they, will they maintain the society we leave them?
Our response has to be, for the sake of those we leave at home, to crush terror in the civilized way that builds monuments of honor for those who will come after us, to show that even in the chaos of war the sacred rules.
We have promises to keep.
© 2005 Cody Williams
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