Full Black - Brad Thor [59]
There was also public relations jihad. It was active daily in the American press. Either media figures denied entirely that there was a Muslim terrorism problem, or they tried to play the false moral equivalency card and paint Christian fundamentalists as equally dangerous and prolific in their violence. When asked for examples, they often cite the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, though McVeigh never claimed to be a Christian and never cited the Bible, or any other religious text, for that matter, as his reason for carrying out his horrific act of terrorism. It was amazing how many people believed the disinformation.
Then there were those media figures who actually tried to put a happy face on Muslim extremism and Sharia law under the banner of cultural diversity. Surely the victims of honor killings, and those beaten and killed for not wearing headscarves, for dating men from outside their faith, or for trying to convert to another religion would strongly disagree.
Harvath was stunned at times by how uncommon common sense was. As far as he was concerned, all of the media figures and the politicians who enabled that kind of barbarism could go to the island, too. Better yet, he would have loved to have flown them all over to Waziristan and dropped them off. Anyone who made it back alive could then spout off about anything they wanted. Until they had seen the evil done in the name of that religion and how good Muslims were brutalized by the people of their own faith, he’d rather not hear them opine on the subject.
He’d seen the worst of what was being done in the name of Islam and it needed more attention, not less. For good Muslims to be able to reform their faith and live peacefully with the rest of the world, they needed American media and politicians on their side, not the side of their enemies.
There were times when Harvath wondered why he continued to do what he did. Why defend a country that included many who thought their nation was arrogant and deserved to be humbled and brought low? Why defend these people? Better yet, agree or disagree, why risk everything, including your life, over and over again, for over 300 million people you would never meet?
These were good questions and went to the core of who he was and why he did what he did.
Harvath had become a SEAL after his father had died in part because he felt guilty about how rocky their relationship had been at the end. But making your dead father somehow happy, or proud of you, wasn’t enough fuel to have propelled a career like Harvath’s. There had to be something deeper, and there was.
Harvath had no brothers or sisters. Because of his career, his father had spent a lot of time on assignments in places he couldn’t talk about. He often left without even being able to say good-bye. Though his mother tried to compensate for his father’s lengthy absences, he carried an emptiness that he had never been able to fill. He always wanted to feel needed, that he was worth coming home to, or better yet, was worth never leaving.
Growing up on Coronado Island, his best friend had been his nextdoor neighbor, a developmentally delayed boy with an enlarged head, named Fred. Other children taunted him mercilessly and called him “egghead.” Though not particularly big, Harvath stood toe to toe with all comers to defend his best friend. Without his father around to teach him to fight and his father’s pals stopping by only occasionally to take him fishing and check up on his mom, he had to learn how to defend himself and Fred. He became street-tough real fast, often fighting several other children at the same time. Never once was he afraid to do what had to be done to defend his friend. He was the boy’s ever-present protector, a role nobody played in his own life.
It was a void Harvath wouldn’t have filled until he joined the SEALs and had teammates, comrades in arms, to whom he would entrust his life on a regular basis and who always had his back.
Was there a need in Harvath to take risks and would that need have been there regardless