Banzai Déjà vu

Published 11:18 pm Saturday, September 15, 2007

While in the Marianas Islands this week, I visited the sight of a gruesome Japanese Banzai attack. Even after the battle for Guam was lost in August of 1944, waves of Japanese soldiers kept charging our Marines. Some strapped explosives to their chests while those who were out of ammunition charged with just bayonets in a hopeless waste of life.

Japanese casualties on these islands were over 90 percent as young “spirit warriors” followed the demands of their upbringing. Prior to the war, a generation of Japanese schoolchildren began each day of class by bowing in the direction of the Imperial Palace, singing the national anthem, and answering the teacher’s following question enthusiastically: “What is your greatest ambition?” “To die for the Emperor!”

Sadly, millions of them would do just that (in addition to 39 million other Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Americans) before Hirohito finally surrendered what was left of a once prosperous nation to Douglas MacArthur.

Although most of us know much more about the battles of Europe, understanding the mindset of death cults like Japan’s during the second World War are essential to grasp the situation we face today in the global war against Islamic fascism.

Just like the Japanese of the 1930’s and 40’s, a generation of Islamic schoolchildren are being taught in madrasas to bow toward Mecca and promise to sacrifice their lives in jihad. Palestinian children as young as three (see the video on Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West) talk excitedly on camera about killing the Jews and becoming martyrs for Allah. Bin Laden’s latest message praises the 9-11 hijackers and exhorts, “So I tell every young man among the youth of Islam: it is your duty to join the caravan (of martyrs).”

The differences between Christianity and radical Islam are clear, and their implications will determine the course of history. Jihadists demand that their followers die for their god. Christianity is just the opposite. Our God sent His only Son to die for His people so that that they could live for Him. The goal of the Christian isn’t to prove his faith through suicide, but rather to demonstrate that faith by living a good life.

A death cult religion promising 70 virgins in paradise to those who take their own lives is sick. Unfortunately for us, it’s also pretty hard to defeat people who are willing to die en masse without incurring quite a few casualties ourselves.

In World War II, the only way we avoided losing million of Americans in an invasion of Japan was to firebomb the country with incendiaries and nuclear weapons. Although we dropped leaflets warning Japanese civilians to evacuate their cities prior to the bombings, hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed and millions were left homeless. No decent human being wants a tragedy like this to be repeated.

The question now is how to defeat death cults like the global Islamic jihad short of bombing their nations back into the dark ages. Perhaps the answer lies in killing radical clerics around the globe by the hundreds rather than killing their followers by the millions. (I suspect that the imams who preach the glory of suicide to their congregations aren’t quite sold on the idea themselves.)

The heart of the jihad movement is the imam or cleric who teaches his people to take up arms against Israel, the United States, and our allies. I suggest that it would be far more humane to attack the spirit of jihad at its source rather than target the poor souls who’ve been brainwashed into believing a lie. But if we’re unwilling to strike at the heart, we’d better prepare ourselves to face banzai charges all over again.



Craig Ziemba is a military pilot who lives in Meridian. His book, Give War a Chance, is available at Meridian area Bible Bookstores.

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