Clinton Romesha’s New York Times bestselling book, Red Platoon, details the deadly and savage battle that occurred in command outpost Keating in 2009. This remote battle station in a far-flung part of Afghanistan was overrun by Taliban fighters before most of the American soldiers were even out of bed. Described as a toilet bowl, command outpost Keating was, geographically speaking, surrounded on all sides by mountainous terrain, ideally suited for the enemy to wage an attack. Its location did not make any sense. The soldiers inhabiting Keating knew this. The Taliban fighters banked on it. An attack was inevitable. The Taliban threw everything in their arsenal at Keating, hoping to wipe the Americans off the map.
Were it not for the sheer grit and quick thinking of the Americans, their plans would surely have succeeded. The Americans were able to regroup, strategize, gather ammunition, and eventually call in airstrikes. The battle lasted fourteen hours. The author of Red Platoon was awarded the Medal of Honor. Eight American soldiers were killed. The brotherhood that was forged during those horrible hours cannot be broken.
Red Platoon is a fast read. The account is gripping; Romesha’s minute-by-minute telling of events offers readers a glimpse into what combat is really like. It is not Hollywood. It is not pretty or glamorous. It is brutal and bloody, tragic and oftentimes confusing. What interests me, though, is who the soldiers actually fought for. You have likely heard before how the men do not fight for a strategic position or an idea or a political stance or whatever their leaders have dreamed up in their command posts. No, the soldiers fight for each other.
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s vicious assassination, it is difficult not to see some comparisons. Academia today is overrun by progressive ideas to the point that many students simply default to that one way of looking at the world. Challenging the institution-approved orthodoxy will get a person canceled or, as in the case with Kirk, killed. It does not matter, dear listeners, what you or I think about Kirk’s ideas. The Socratic method has been replaced with the mindless repetition of ideas that have been curated and endorsed by those in power. Independent thinking is gone. There is only one sheet of music, one point of view. And any other will be shouted off campus.
It is a battle which makes me think that what we might need is some of the grit that was on display in a dangerously remote part of Afghanistan. Those who want free inquiry, free speech, and the type of dialogue that builds, not tears down would do well to adopt a stick-to-it-ness posture, bravely standing in the breach against those who are hellbent on silencing those they deem to be dissenters against what is clearly an ever-changing ideology that is only getting more and more radical. Where will it end? Is it even designed to end?
We should all be mindful of falling into an us vs. them worldview. This, I believe, would be to capitulate to a way of understanding the world that divides and creates discord. This would only perpetuate the problem; indeed, it would be to read from the same script as the Marxists. Our so-called Taliban, I propose, are not like the flesh and blood militants in Romesha’s book. Our Taliban is made up of broken ideas, dangerous and warped ideas, ideas, to be sure, that bewilder and avert our gaze away from what is true and good. Of course, someone might counter by asking the question, Who gets to decide what is true and good? My answer? Look at the fruit. Some ideas are sown that become bad fruit: despair, addled thinking, broken families, staggering levels of narcissism. Other ideas are sown that become good fruit: stability, clarity, purpose, humility. God’s law is imprinted on every human heart, which means that we know what we know. May we all find the grit and determination to defend it.
