Calculated Sacrifice

Would you die so your family could be spared from getting killed?  Most of us would like to think so.  Would you sacrifice your neighbor's family in order to save all the other families on your street?  Well, that's different, but admit it, you had to pause and think for a moment.

This is the kind of choice the rebels in Syria may have been facing.  The civil war is not going well.  Assad is making inroads and is getting reinforcements from abroad.  Whatever military victories there are to report are those of Al Qaeda aligned troops.  Every week, 1000 of your people are dying, and there is no end in sight.  The country is falling apart at the seams.

One day you find a cache of chemical weapons that the Assad regime had forgotten about.  Half out of curiosity, half out of excitement you bring one container marked with a skull home with you.  You think about what kind of destruction this could cause, and your hatred towards Assad increases in that moment.  A fleeting thought crosses your mind.  What if one of these weapons exploded in your neighborhood, and hundreds would be killed?  Would America then finally come to your and your countrymen's rescue?  You are ashamed even thinking this way, but one day you approach your tribal elder to see what he thinks would happen.

He just sits there and thinks, doesn't even look at you.  For a minute, and another.  You feel like you want to run away.  He has the power to banish you from the tribe.  But then he speaks, slowly. "It is our only hope.  May Allah have mercy on us.  We need to do this."  It is your secret.

And who would judge you.  Not me, unless I've walked a mile in your shoes, and frankly that is something I can do without.