A Cosmic Tear: the Mark Daily Story

 by George Shadroui  

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The tragedy of Iraq is that it has not been handled with the kind of care that Mark Daily and tens of thousands of other precious souls who have lost their lives deserved.

Mark Daily, for those of you who might not know, is an American hero.
 
He is also, at the young age of 23, no longer physically with us, though one hopes and prays that his spirit lives within us as part of our collective culture. If not, our nation is in for a rough future.
 
Here’s the story, compliments of Christopher Hitchens. Mark Daily was a bright, dynamic young man who was indifferent about our effort in Iraq until he stumbled across an article by Mr. Hitchens a couple of years ago.
 
Daily changed his mind, and did so knowing full well the risks of joining the military and serving his country there. In a fateful moment, while serving there, he realized that a lead vehicle was not adequately equipped to resist an IED attack. So Daily switched places and put his own vehicle in front of the military column. Not long after, he and his team bore the brunt of a huge explosion that killed all of them.
 
Hitchens was shocked, even dismayed, when he learned, through a Los Angeles Times story, that a column he had written might have led Daily to enlist, resulting, ultimately, in the death of a courageous and decent American. He contacted the reporter, then the family, and eventually was invited to participate in spreading Daily’s ashes along the Oregon coast, per the young soldier’s wishes. Seems Daily had spent glorious summer days there with the family as a young boy and teenager.
 
I mention this by way of tribute to a beautiful article that Hitchens has written about Daily and his own interactions with the family, which appears on the Vanity Fair website. Hitchens, alas, continues to crusade against God and religious faith, but this article is infused with a feeling of spiritual compassion that is religious, in the best sense of the word, in its faith and compassion.
 
The article also reveals that Hitchens himself is beginning to despair that the effort in Iraq might be lost, that it has been hopelessly and badly managed, that his advocacy on behalf of the Kurds and the Iraqis might have played a part in the death of a remarkable human being.
 
The losses are now so many and so often that they have become statistics rather than individual tragedies, but thanks to the efforts of Hitchens and many other fine writers and journalists, every now and then we are reminded not only of the terrible cost of war, but of the terrible enemies we confront.
 
And it is not just an American tragedy, of course. For all the chest thumping by those who demand that Iraqis be held accountable, the fact is that Iraqis have been bearing the disproportionate pain and suffering of this war. Tens of thousands of Iraqis – also someone’s precious children or parent or friend — have died at the hands of murderous gangs and terrorists in Iraq whose only gift is for destruction and violence.
 
And to what purpose? To derail a government that the Iraqis themselves freely elected, to kill the dreams and hopes of Muslim children who long for a brighter future? To drive out an American presence that, had peace been allowed to prevail, would have already been well on its way toward withdrawal? It is difficult to comprehend the nihilism and hatred that motivates such people or the resentment they feel toward the West and the United States.
 
What is certain is that Mark Daily’s story and Hitchens’ tribute to him is symbolic of the battle in which we are engaged, a war between those who value life as a special gift from God and those who believe they are agents of God when they wreak havoc on the helpless and the innocent, on the agents of freedom and liberty. I don't know if America's motives are pure, but I do know that Hitchens’s eloquent tribute underscores precisely what is at stake, even if it does not offer us a definitive path on how to ultimately overcome those who embrace terror and violence as their political and religious tools of choice.
 
This much is clear, against their violence and nihilism, and even in the face of unspeakable loss and grief, we must continue to embrace the idea that each life is precious and each person a gift of immeasurable worth, and that human freedom is an unalienable right.
 
The tragedy of Iraq is not that we tried to rescue people from a fate of despair, torture and death. The tragedy is that it has not been handled – on any side of the issue — with the kind of care that Mark Daily and tens of thousands of other precious souls who have lost their lives deserved. Might I end with my own tribute to the son of a friend, who died in Iraq a couple of years ago:

The Suffering Cross
The same sky, the same fear
the face of home, no longer near.
A bent man, a broken bird,
A son's voice no longer heard.

I wonder if a hug can break
the cosmic splash a tear will make,
when silence fills the sacred joy,
that was the laughter of a boy.

No prayers offered on desert plains,
in quiet chapels, in blistering rains,
can stop the heartbeat of brittle chimes

That pierce the womb of a nation.

As granite faces seek to gloss,
the ever present, suffering cross,
that human kind cannot face,
but must embrace.

Foreign Affairs: Iraq War

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