Courage

No, I'm not talking about Dan Rather's ridiculous sign off before he was nationally exposed as a first rate sanctimonious shithead rivalling even Bill Moyers. Rather, the Templeton Foundation has a great online newsletter and one of their recent issues posed the question to six scholars/thinkers/pontificators "Were the 9/11 Terrorists Cowards or Courageous?"http://www.incharacter.org/article.php?article=132. I'm by no means a thinker or an intellectual (should be obvious to anyone unfortunate enough to flounder onto this blog) but this isn't really a hard question for me to answer, but I was curious as to the responses from the big brains. Fortunately, contained in their pieces are some worthy gems:

From Ruth R. Wisse:

"America may appear to have incomparable advantages of population, resources, and a fighting tradition embodied in its national anthem, but if a significant portion of its elites no longer recognize and advocate the values that separate them from Islamists, the country will be overtaken by those with stronger convictions--from within and from without. The Japanese honored their kamikaze pilots, and Islamists honor the suicide attackers on Israel and America. Courage and cowardice are culturally determined, and God cannot help the society that confuses its values with those of its rivals." I think Ruth probably got scratched off the cocktail party list of the moral equivalency crowd with that brand of clear thinking.

From Robert Royal:

"There's nothing noble about walking into a pizza parlor in Israel and blowing up yourself and a bunch of civilians. There's nothing elevating in shooting up a Mumbai hotel, attacking Westerners, and dying in the process. And even in the marriage of Heaven and Hell, to which the modern world sometimes desperately seeks to aspire, it takes great credulity to believe that there was anything in the September 11 murderers worthy of the exalted name of courage." Robert won't be speaking at Harvard anytime soon.

From Paul McHugh (on the group of Flight 93 passengers who fought the attackers):

"Their aims and actions emerged from circumstances they faced and their sense of responsibility for its outcome. With little time to plan, they tied to thwart the aims of their opponents. Realistic conceptions and life-sustaining motivations brought them partial success and the gratitude of their countrymen." Put McHugh in the capitalist lackey crowd with the others.

The concept of courage is further explored in a piece in the same issue, titled "A Soldier's Book Bag" by Anita Blair. Included in her list of books popular with professional soldiers (in the United States, at least) are: "Once an Eagle, a novel by Anton Myrer about the career of a good officer against a "bad careerist" and the historical work by John Keegan, "The Face of Battle" which explores several epic battles, including Agincourt. I haven't read Myrer's book, but I did read W.E.B. Griffin's "The Corps" series which has a similar theme of a brave, resourceful officer often finding himself on the short end of things when confronted by toadying career types only interested in security and promotion. Great books with interesting detail. My old man, a former Marine liked them, so I guess that's an endorsement beyond my own. Regarding Agincourt, I'm going to reread Keegan, since I just finished a novel about Agincourt by renowned serial historical fiction writer, Bernard Cornwell. His is a cracking good book and a first rate page turner and it brought the battle to light well beyond what I had previously understood. Included is a great acknowledgement at the end, where he cites the scholarly works in which he relied, and pointed out fictional embellishments. Cornwell excels at painting the gruesome business of war, particularly of the medieval sort. Was courage displayed at Agincourt? Most certainly, but also a great deal of plain meanness and national vengeance. Give it a go if you want some great summer reading.