Terrorists are not heroes…

But I know who are.

By R.J. Godlewski

© June 19, 2007, All Rights Reserved

 

 

“Jason also knew a very important fact; A dead general

meant a possible martyr, and the press just loved to

attribute heroic deeds to dead assholes.”

THE GATESTRIAN KNIGHTS (JASON TASK SERIES #1) By R.J. Godlewski

 

 

            Today, the world learned of the deaths of nine brave firefighters down in Charleston, South Carolina and while I do not know them personally, I know the town in which they served and died. Charleston Naval Base was the home port for Mine Division 125 and with which I served briefly with as a reservist. So, as always, whenever I hear a familiar location on television my ears naturally tune into the story. Like I said, sometimes just a word or two relates an otherwise unfamiliar story and I feel compelled to jot down a few words.

            These brave souls perished doing their job; a position most people couldn’t – or wouldn’t – do if their lives depended upon it. I know. As I write these words I am glancing down at a scar on my right underarm which I received while fighting a fire many, many years ago in the Navy. It is small – about two inches in length – and so was the effort. I was an electrician, which meant that not only was my responsibility to secure the electrical power to a space before the hoses were opened up; I also calibrated the gas detection equipment. Occasionally, however, things do not go as planned and everyone finds themselves assigned to other tasks to pitch in. So, brief as my experience was, I still understood what it was like to fight fire and I realized real fast that I didn’t like it.

            There is nothing glamorous about being totally surrounded by flames. There is nothing inherently exciting about smoke heavy enough to reduce your visibility to a few inches. There is nothing to brag about it being so hot as to literally smell your mask begin to melt away from your face. And, yes, there are better memories than that of spending days blowing soot out of your nostrils. I was trained to fight fires in the Navy because sometimes a thousand miles was just a little too far to swim. Our nation’s firefighters, however, do the job day in and day out. They serve long, hard hours and make sacrifices few others are willing to make. If it weren’t for them, we’d be just like the crew of my ship – isolated from the world with nobody but ourselves to save our own asses. Firefighters are heroes in my book.

            Police officers also place their lives on the line for our sake. I don’t know what it is like to be a police officer and, quit frankly, I wouldn’t want to be one. The first time that a motorist complained about “ticket quotas” I’d probably shoot out their tires. It’s not that I have a bad temper – shush, Mom J -- it’s just that I don’t like assholes. Yet, there are others out there who do show patience towards those ‘civilians’ like me who ignore their duties. My brother is one and that’s probably enough for our family. His wife, by the way, is a 911 dispatcher and I know how hard that job is. I once tested for the position; as soon as the instructor pushed the play button on the tape recorder, I quietly placed down my pencil and notepad and calmly walked out of the auditorium and basically thought “Screw this. I’d never be able to handle a person like that on the telephone!” Yes, police officers and firefighters are heroes in my book too.

            Medical personnel are probably amongst the most underappreciated and ironically most demanded of people in our culture. While Sara was going through chemo, the nurses and doctors would go about their duties taking care of patients, almost as if they were on autopilot. At first, it just seemed like they tuned out the people surrounding them. I didn’t, however. I watched everyone. The nice man who for months came in for treatment along with his newspaper and cell phone to conduct business from the lobby that now sat alone in the corner weeping. I realized that he had just received ‘the news’. The young couple who spent their first year of marriage visiting the hospital. He was the one with the IVs dangling out of his hand.

            The nurses and doctors didn’t notice me noticing them, but I soon realized that they weren’t going through the motions on autopilot. They took an active and very much upbeat persona when around the patients, but this changed later on. I remained upbeat around Sara because I didn’t know that she was dying. The medical staff did, but still they remained polite, optimistic, and encouraging. So did Sara, in a way, though I still debate myself on whether I would’ve wanted ‘to know’ earlier. Regardless, it’s not a job that I would want to do – keeping dying people happy and upbeat.

            My little sister was an EMT and I know how hard it was for me to lift tiny little Sara up while I changed her bedding. My sister had to carry large men. Sick men. Dying men. She, too, now works in a hospital and cares for people who I would rather not deal with – drug users, AIDS patients, you name it. We both have a heart of gold, I’m told, but only she has the stomach for that sort of thing. Being a single parent probably says a lot, but that’s just another job that I wouldn’t want to do. Yes, medical people are definitely heroes in my book.

            Just a bit ago, I watched one of the many ‘federal agent’ dramas on television. Most of us don’t deal with these people, but I’d be wrong if I said that they weren’t out there doing a very special job for us. Just the other week I had a pair pull into my driveway. Seems that someone alert connected the dots when I inquired about a batch of rifles and land for a ‘training center’ in Florida. The inquiry was for my INERT organization, but they just had to make sure nevertheless.  Was I inconvenienced? Perhaps. But I thank God that they’re out there checking up on such things. They left with a couple of my novels. J I just wish that I could let each and every one of them know that they are heroes in my book.

            Finally, we come to the true heroes. The ones that risk their lives on the frontlines of combat every day. While we sit back here at home on our comfortable sofas, watching our favorite shows on television, these brave men and women are knee deep in combat securing our very future. While we sit up, all prim and proper like, debating the merits of whether we should be there, or here, or perhaps over there, these people are fighting an enemy that we don’t want to meet anywhere. Oh, I could lay claim to ‘some knowledge’ about their role. I could remind you that I’ve been studying terrorism for a quarter of a century. I could remark about my own experiences within the Navy, about my three non-profit organizations, or even of my pending degree in Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict. None of that, however, means a hill of beans because I am not there, at this time, and doing the job that they are doing

            They are heroes because they have accepted the call, the sacrifices, and are doing a fabulous job. Many politicians and media types are saying that the war in Iraq is lost. This is most emphatically not true. There is one thing that I do know; if the war in Iraq were lost, we’d sure as hell know it. There wouldn’t be any debates over the issue and we wouldn’t be secure enough to even pay fat cat politicians to screw around with our future. Yes, in the book of heroes; those who fight the terrorists on our behalf are identified in the first paragraph on the first page and nobody will dislodge them from that post – as long as I am around.

            I am sincere about my narrative regarding heroes here. I think that all of the above are worthy of our admiration and respect. I hope that they may, in some manner, come to understand this. However, there are people who are most definitely not heroes, but the media tries to equate them with such. Politicians are not heroes, or movie stars, or action heroes. Politicians are public servants, nothing more. In the book of public heroes, politicians render nothing more than a brief asterisk at the end of the appendix. Perhaps someday, we could have a hero for a politician. As it stands now, however, nobody decent will run.

            Media types also like to make heroes out of terrorists. This is despicable; to be considered a hero, one must be human. Rather, one must be ‘human-like’. I know of a few dogs that have become heroes and very much deservedly so. Terrorists represent the antithesis of heroism. They kill innocents and hide when confronted by our own heroes. They hide behind masks, within sacred structures, and even behind women and children. They like to shoot macho videos of themselves sporting AK-47s and shouting anti-American or anti-Jewish rhetoric. Still, they’re always hiding behind that damn mask. Some ‘heroes’.

            I don’t know why the media prefers to turn terrorists into freedom fighters, or even grants them recognition through their daily broadcasts. No one ever grants such honor to the cockroaches that occasionally caused me some discomfort. Is it because of their religion? An institution is only as valuable as those who support it. What is it exactly, then, that makes journalists, reporters, entertainers, and even some politicians equate terrorism with heroics? I have a very, very good imagination and even I cannot see anything but two-bit thugs that need to be vaporized. Thank God that we do have heroes who can do just that. God Bless America and her brave men and women serving in the military! Without them, we wouldn’t know how to define the word hero.