Split Second by Douglas E. Richards

off limits, including genocide.
    Many in the West, compassionate
but misguided, were determined to bend over backwards to understand the extremists,
to empathize with them.
    But there was no understanding an
ideology this rabid, this diseased. Who could understand a woman who would
strap a bomb on a child and send him or her into a crowded square?
    These extremists had been
brainwashed by a sick, close-minded, hateful ideology. Some in the West believed
that poverty was responsible, that America was somehow at fault for hoarding so
much of the world’s resources. But many of the extremists were well-off, as Bin
Laden had been. And hundreds of millions of people around the world lived in
squalor, but had never resorted to sawing off heads and burning men alive.
    But while the West often failed
to understand the motivations of these extremists, the extremists understood the motivations of the West only too well. They
found the West soft. Gullible. Stupid. Its media easily manipulated.
    So their snipers would hide
behind women and children, using them as human shields, picking off soldiers. And
this wasn’t a one-off phenomenon, but a deliberate strategy. Richard Kemp,
commander of British forces in Afghanistan, had written in a formal report
that, “The Taliban’s use of women to shield gunmen as they engage NATO forces
is now so normal it is deemed barely worthy of comment.”
    If an American soldier was too
decent to shoot through these helpless human shields he would die. If he did defend
himself and a civilian was killed, this would appear on news programs around
the world as yet another example of the cruelty and overzealous nature of the
American military, of the barbarity of the American soldier, emphasizing the
plight of the poor freedom fighters whose countries they were invading.
    This wasn’t to say that some American
soldiers weren’t sadists. Some were. it was inevitable. And this wasn’t to say
that mistakes were never made, that atrocities never occurred, coming from the American
side. Innocent civilians were killed, each and every occurrence a horror.
    But to suggest this was systemic,
to suggest the Western forces were no better, and possibly worse, than the ruthless
extremists, or that the West had brought this on themselves, made Blake’s blood
boil. The Americans often went to great lengths, and even risked their own
lives, to limit civilian casualties. While the very mission of the extremists was to wipe out as many Western women and
children as possible, billions if they could.
    Still, there were those who
continued to believe that one man’s terrorist was another man’s freedom
fighter, even with respect to groups as despicable as the Taliban. The same Taliban
who willfully destroyed sixth-century statues of Buddha carved into the side of
a cliff. The same Taliban the United Nations reported routinely committed
systematic massacres against civilians.
    And those who fought with every
ounce of strength for women’s rights in America would somehow overlook the
atrocities the Taliban committed against their own women. Treating them as
possessions, prohibiting them from showing their faces, from walking in public
without a male relative to escort them. And executing female children for the unforgivable crime of attending
school.
    Yes, nothing was totally
black-and-white. Yes, there were good and bad actors in every large group of
people. But those who suggested an equivalency between the actions of the West
and the extremists made Blake so furious he couldn’t see straight.
    So he had left it all behind.
For his sanity. For his life. To come down off his adrenaline addiction. To
find a way to feel alive without need of life-and-death stakes. To never again
have to suffer the death of brothers.
    And not to have to take orders
from politicians who couldn’t see Islamic extremism for the despicable ideology
it was, an ideology immune to reason, its adherents showing a level of
barbarity and