Teaching Our Son About Killing

The man panted hard as he ran faster and faster.  He turned and ran into the unfamiliar alley, and to his horror, he was trapped. Behind him he could hear the footsteps of his killer.  Frantically, his eyes raced across the walls of the buildings, looking for any escape.  The footsteps came nearer and nearer, and he turned to see the face of his killer.

The killer didn't hurry.  He didn't need to.  He raised his gun, pointed it at his target and shot.  Within moments, the man he had stalked was dead.  He calmly replaced his weapon to his holster and left the area.

That story was told in a documentary I saw as a young adult years ago,by the killer.  There was no hunt for the shooter, no trial, no accusations, indeed, no one ever even searched for him. To know that creates a horror in any reader.  A murder, done. A murder, with no retribution, no justice served. It sounds horrible, shocking.

Perhaps it would help you to know the victim was a notorious Nazi, responsible for thousands of deaths.  The killer, who was interviewed a short time before his death, related that he and several other men were hired and sworn to secrecy by one of the European governments, to go out and assassinate several top Nazis that had been responsible for so many deaths.  The interview has been stored away somewhere, and there is absolutely no trace of information of it on the World Wide Web. But I never forgot the interview, nor the terrible assignment given to the assassin.  No one cared that justice was served swiftly, that men were left to die in a alley or in the hallway to their apartment.  The world was sick of Nazis and the hate they used to rule the world.

I thought of this as the little details have been released about Bin Laden's death.  On the day it happened, my Oldest Son announced his joy at the news that the United States had got their man.

"He'll rest in hell next to Hitler," he declared.

My constant mission is to make the kid think.  "Really?" I asked. "Now why would he be placed there?"

Oldest rattled off a plethora of reasons that Bin Laden deserved no less than the bottom pit of fire.  But I wanted him to stretch his brain. 

"What makes him any different from King Richard the Lionhearted, who set off to get the infidels out of Jerusalem?  He often came to towns where his men swept in and killed everyone, only to find out later that the whole town had been made up of Christians."

Oldest paused.  "I don't know enough about the Crusades," he admitted.

"Surely King Richard thought that he was involved in a Holy War. Didn't Bin Laden consider it thus?  But Hitler wanted to create a superior race. There was no religion involved, no moral reason. It was for superiority and power. How can we know how God will judge him?"

It startled our son to think outside the "Hang 'em high for their crimes" Cowboy Justice that we see as so prevelant in America.  My knee-jerk reaction was that this Bin Laden assassination was so much our Wild West Heritage .

And then I rememberd the interview with the man who had to hunt down his Nazi prey.  It made me think of our nation much differently.  Bin Laden's assassination wasn't just a meeting in the middle of the street, both guns on the hips. This was a visceral reaction akin to the ganging up of kids on the playground who are sick and tired of the bully beating them up.  This is the reaction of normal people tired of dealing with morons who can't play nice with each other. It's not just our nation who does it.  It's just that sometimes, people have to do things they don't want to do. What an awful thing to teach our son.