Eight Feet Deep

Per­haps it is too dif­fi­cult to look inside the life of our enemies.

I speak of the jihadist — our main enemy these days — who killed thou­sands on 9/11 and con­tinue to kill with their strapped-on explo­sives or even with weapons of mass destruc­tion if they are avail­able. Many Amer­i­cans prob­a­bly see these fight­ers as young men with brown skin and haunt­ing eyes. Some are from the poor neigh­bor­hoods where their lives have been one of want and lack of jus­tice. Oth­ers come from priv­i­lege, cour­tesy of the petro dol­lars from the mas­sive oil and gas wealth of some Mid­dle East­ern states.

But oth­ers who fight civil soci­ety also seem nor­mal and are the boy next door turned “The Jihadist Next Door,” which is also the title of a fas­ci­nat­ing New York Times Mag­a­zine arti­cle I read yes­ter­day. The arti­cle — by Pulitzer Prize win­ning writer Andrea Elliott — explores the life of  Alabama boy Omar Hammami.

Omar is the son of a Syr­ian immi­grant, and Mus­lim, who mar­ried a South­ern Bap­tist from Alabama. His intel­lect and wit drove Omar to become one of the most pop­u­lar kids in his high school. He was steeped in both of his family’s cul­tures includ­ing spend­ing sum­mer days shelling peas on his mater­nal grandmother’s farm.

But even­tu­ally, Omar’s intel­lec­tual and reli­gious curios­ity steered him to those with the more rad­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tions of Islam, in which as a stu­dent and young adult Omar became increas­ingly entrenched.

A fas­ci­na­tion with Soma­lia — com­plete with a Soma­lian wife — landed Omar in that African nation, held together by threads of author­ity. Now, the young Alaba­man who still signs off “Later Tater” to his sis­ter in e-mails has become one of the most pow­er­ful and fiercest jihadists in Somalia.

If you are look­ing for answers as how a seem­ingly nor­mal young Syrian-American boy, the smart but funny kid every­one likes, becomes a jihadist you will either be dis­ap­pointed or find your­self look­ing ever deeper.

Per­haps it is the lack of a solid rea­son why this young man, who says he con­sid­ers Amer­ica a tar­get in the Jihad, is both so fright­en­ing and inter­est­ing. Maybe the clash of cul­tures were too great for Omar to with­stand, even though on the sur­face he seems more assim­i­lated than many Anglo Amer­i­cans. He doesn’t appear to be a prod­uct of bad, or even lack­adaisi­cal par­ent­ing. So why is Omar a jihadist? It is a ques­tion that too often has fol­lowed the end to tragic cults, which is the clos­est I came to a par­al­lel. If you are pre­pared to read an excel­lent arti­cle with an open mind, you might not be dis­ap­pointed not know­ing the answer to that question.

 Few for­mer Amer­i­can lead­ers can so quickly piss off his or her oppo­nents the way for­mer Pres­i­dent Jimmy Carter can.

 One doesn’t have to read all the top right-wing blogs or lis­ten to the major reac­tionary talk radio shows to know that anger is drip­ping like blood from the Carter-haters today after he stated what many less promi­nent peo­ple have been say­ing for days. That is, of course, that the behav­ior behind the “You Lie” out­cry of Repub­li­can U.S. Rep. Joe Wil­son of South Car­olina is steeped in racism.

 Now it is no sur­prise that every­one and their dog who sup­ports Wil­son says there is no truth to such a charge. Even Pres­i­dent Obama’s press sec­re­tary Robert Gibbs says his boss doesn’t agree with Carter’s assess­ment. We are left to take the Big Man’s word as to whether such a state­ment from the first African-American pres­i­dent (Obama’s daddy and not Obama him­self if you will remem­ber was born in Africa) is sincere, playing pol­i­tics or are all of the above. Therein is the prob­lem “Big­ger than Dal­las” as peo­ple say down here in Texas unless they live in Hous­ton or Fort Worth.

 Racism is not some­thing one can see like, say, a three-headed chicken. It is not an olfac­tory sense like whiff­ing the aroma of a dead mack­erel on the beach. Nor is racism to be heard (well, at least the feel­ing or behav­ior itself can’t be heard), tasted (except in some rare instances of poisoning) or touched (fill in your own exception.)

 You may call Joe Wil­son a racist all you want. One might say that much of the dys­pep­tic right-wing polit­i­cal actions as of late cer­tainly appear as being spurred by racism, such as keep­ing the chil­dren from watch­ing their pres­i­dent give a speech on stay­ing in school. But the fact is, if Joe Wil­son says he isn’t a racist, there is lit­tle short of some legal action such as a crim­i­nal con­vic­tion for a hate crime that will prove it. Ditto for those who screamed that they wanted to save their lit­tle inno­cent dar­lings from being indoc­tri­nated by Nazi-commie-pinko-homo-freaking-Democrats.

 What makes the charge of racism even more dif­fi­cult to prove is that save for those who dress like punk-rock icon Henry Rollins, as in his guest gig on FX’s “Sons of Anar­chy,” most racists are not going to show out­wards signs of racism nor admit their feelings.

 Some racists will jump up and down, shout, knock the crap out of, per­haps even kill you if you dare label them a racists. Why? Because they do not see them­selves as such. It’s not nice to be called a racist. It’s kind of taboo.

 On the other hand, if you were raised in a cul­ture in which your par­ents or grand­par­ents, neigh­bors and even your soci­ety expressed racial prej­u­dice — such as the “White” and “Col­ored” water foun­tains and rest rooms I used to see grow­ing up — that doesn’t make you a racist.

 If any­one believed that racial prej­u­dice was going to be quickly dis­patched by the elec­tion of a black (and half-white) pres­i­dent then per­haps now it is (way, way past) time to come back to reality.

 That there are those in pol­i­tics who are using the so-called “race card” to their advan­tage — on both sides — like­wise shouldn’t be shock­ing. That is because the race card is a trick card. It is there when some­one says it is there, and it’s not there when some­one says it is not.