Dec. 31, 2006

If I Had 3,000 Crosses …

By Harry T. Cook

A little more than three weeks from now, to remind us all of the reproductive freedom tardily granted to American women by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade on Jan. 22, 1973, the anti-reproductive rights zealots will be planting white crosses on church lawns. The crosses, they will explain, stand for all the embryos and fetuses that did not become infants born of their mothers due, the cross planters will allege, to murder.

Without rehearsing the tiresome arguments for and against reproductive rights, let us move on to a set of murders committed neither in Planned Parenthood clinics nor in the storied back-alley abortionist’s lair, but in the tortured land of Iraq.

If I had 3,000 crosses, I would place them on the front lawn of our family’s home, then hang from the eaves a banner with big box-car letters saying: EACH CROSS STANDS FOR THE LIFE OF A U.S. SERVICE PERSON WHO DIED IN IRAQ.

If I had 160,000 more crosses, I would plant them next to those of the anti-reproductive rights people with a sign saying: EACH CROSS STANDS FOR THE LIFE OF AN IRAQI WHO DIED IN THE WAKE OF AMERICA’S PRE-EMPTIVE INVASION OF IRAQ.

If I had 163,000 crosses, that is what I would do with them.

The cross has become, among other things, the ensign of an aggressive Christianity, an in-your-face symbol for a moral superiority complex. It is also used, weirdly, to mark the roadside locations of fatal accidents. It is worn in lapels, on necklaces and as earrings.

In its inception, the cross was the electric chair of its day. It was an instrument of torture and execution. It was therefore the ideal standard under which the armies of righteous crusaders would march eastward to eliminate the Muslim scourge nine times between 1095 and 1272 C.E.

Christianist theologians tout the cross, absent the Corpus Christi, as a sign of victory. It is not for nothing that the Greek word from which the English “gospel” comes means “good news” as in “We have crushed the enemy under our heels!” Envision the 300-pound fullback lumbering off the gridiron, index finger pumping the air and chanting, “We’re No. 1!”

If had 3,000 crosses, I would stencil on each of them the name, rank and serial number of a U.S. soldier or Marine killed in Iraq. Yes, I know the number hasn’t reach 3,000 yet, but by the time I could complete such a hypothetical process, there would surely be that – and maybe more if the proposed “surge” of American troops materializes in Iraq. (What was the Nov. 7 election all about? Wasn’t it the war? What part of “NO!” does George W. Bush not understand?)

Meanwhile, I would not make the sign of the cross on my chest with a gun to my head. I have come to hate all the cross stands for in the common imagination. Yet as a sign of remembrance of wrongful death, the cross does just fine.

The thing is, though, all the passion spent on remembering persons who never existed is passion that might better be spent on calling attention to those almost 3,000 particular persons who did exist and have been cut down, many of them in life’s prime. And to what end? To fulfill a depraved vision of an America  ¼ber alles. Do we not convene war-crime trials to answer that kind of thing?

If I had 3,000 crosses, I would display them as an indictment of those who have put our young men and women in harm’s way and called it the path to victory.

At least the suicide bomber wants to die.

 © Copyright 2006, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.