The Cult part 1

America is, at least in theory,  a nation of free association.  It is, therefore, a nation of cults.  Since the word "cult", like the words "bias" or "conspiracy", trigger negative moral connotations in the ears of most people, let us take care to define the word.

Here is a standard definition from an American English dictionary: a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.

That definition is morally neutral. Morally redemptive and morally repugnant ideologies and practices have all started out on the fringe as "cults", with relatively small groups of devoted adherents.  The best of humanity (Christianity, the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution) began as cults, as did the worst (Naziism, Communism, Islamism).

But there is a specific American cult that is at the center of the recent...whats the word?...scandal?....tempest?.....diversion?....puppet show?.....regarding the Khan family and their patriarch's speech at the Democratic National Convention.

The first thing any human being must say if he or she wishes to pontificate on this issue is that their heart breaks for Mr. and Mrs. Khan.  Any person of any age, gender, race, or station in life should feel a visceral anguish for these parents who had to bury their child, even if their child was a full grown adult who chose a dangerous profession.

The very idea of burying a child grates against our sense of cosmic order.  It is an assault upon the space-time continuum, a thing that tests our faith even if we never had any.  If you have ever seen the opening scene of "Patton", when George C. Scott is speaking about the thought of America ever losing a war....."The very idea is HATEFUL to us"...... 

But Captain Khan did not die in a car crash.  He did not die of a disease.  He did not die defending his home or his family from a predator.  Captain Khan died in a war.  He died thousands of miles from his country in a country whose government or people had never attacked the United States.  He was killed by a suicide bomber, who was, from a certain point of view, a stone aged moral abortion who would have served mankind better by hanging himself from an olive tree but, from another point of view, was simply doing what most honorable men would do, which was resisting an alien invasion of their home.

That suicide bomber had a mother.  And her son is just as dead as Captain Khan.  There is an uncomfortable commonality between the motives of Captain Khan and his nameless killer, even if we spend prodigious amounts of mental and rhetorical energy trying to deny this fact.  Most Americans would recoil at the idea that Khan and his killer were morally equal, but we lose our humanity if we deny that the grief of their mothers is.

Captain Khan was not sent to Iraq to hand out bottled water and insulin.  He was sent there to kill human beings and to destroy physical property.  That's what the military does.  That's what every military has done since the dawn of civilization.  The military is a tool.  And sometimes a hammer is called for.  But let's not smash someone in the head with a hammer and then feign shock and offense when they resist, as if we were merely handing out library cards and water filters.

The only operative question in the case of Captain Khan is "what did he die for"?  To all the adherents of The Cult I'm writing of here, the answer to the above question is "for us" or "for our freedom".  No. No!

This is a lie.  It is a vicious, disgusting, dangerous lie.  Captain Khan's death, and his very presence in Iraq in 2004 did precisely nothing to preserve or enhance my freedom.  In fact, the enterprise which he represented categorically threatened and degraded my freedom.

The fact that American parents lose children in wars, and that American children lose parents in wars, and that all of our children and grandchildren will be paying the bills for these wars for untold decades, is tragic enough. 

American soldiers do not protect our freedoms; we protect them ourselves by exercising those freedoms without fear. 

Saddam Hussein was not going to infringe upon my freedom of association.  But since the invasion of Iraq, my own government has seen fit to seize every bit of digital correspondence sent or received by American citizens.

We (hopefully) teach our children that killing is wrong.  But we (not all of us) simultaneously teach those very children that the people who we train to kill, and pay to train to kill, and ship all around the world to kill, are inherently the best among us, our heroes, our saviors, our protectors.  This is The Cult. 

Captain Khan died 12 years ago.  Since then, the region which he was sent to pacify has descended into a barbarism which takes expert historians to find precedent for.  Captain Khan did not die for me.  If he killed people in Iraq  before his death, he did not kill for me.  He died not for me, but for The Cult.