WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT CHILDREN TURNING THEIR PARENTS IN TO THE AUTHORITIES?

I don't remember which frightening futuristic book I read in high school it was-- Brave New World? 1984?-- but I do remember the visceral revulsion I felt about a fascist state coming between family members and encouraging, if that word is strong enough, children to turn their parents in to the authorities. The other morning I woke up to a CNN talking head interviewing an author and former soldier, Daniel Hendrex, whose book, A Soldier's Promise, is currently being marketed and promoted by Simon & Shuster. The topic CNN was pushing: heroic Iraqi boy rescued after betraying terrorist father.

Not only was I not there and not only do I have no unbiased information about the story, I haven't even read the book. I can't purport to make a judgment about this case. Hendrex seemed like a regular enough guy on TV and in the interviews I've read about him today. I'm thinking, though, that a lot of how one would look at this tragic situation would have to do with how you see Bush's America and post-Saddam Iraq. Are the Americans there unwanted and brutal foreign occupiers? Or are they benevolent liberators and spreaders of democracy and benevolent free market capitalism? Are the Iraqis fighting them terrorists and jihadists? Or are they patriotic defenders of their homeland and their families? Is the government a quisling puppet state controlled by Bush or a legitimate expression of the Iraqi people?

Hendrex' tale starts in Husaybah, a Sunni Arab city near the Syrian border. Nicknamed "Steve-O," the 14 year old approached an American military checkpoint and volunteered to become an informer against his father who was the local head of an insurgent group. (He seems to have turned his father in because his father was beating him but also admits that the worst beating came when his father caught him stealing money.) The father had forced the frightened boy into a couple of insurgency operations that scared the hell out of him. After a battle he told Steve-O "I'm proud of you. You did a good job, my son. The Americans are all Jews and Christians. They are strangers occupying our country. God will send our souls to paradise for fighting them."

Steve-O gave the Americans information so that they could arrest his father-- as well as 30-40 other insurgents-- and find hidden weapons, and the boy was quickly identified as a collaborator (primarily because of the incompetence of the Americans dealing with questioning the captured Iraqis). They paid him $1,000, a huge sum in a place like Husaybah, as he led them on at least 2 dozen operations to arrest insurgents over several months. Now, his mother supposedly killed and his father in prison, he is living in the U.S. He appeared on Oprah.