Our Vulnerable Democracy

Islamic fundamentalists are seeding war in Sudan, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel. Their preferred weapon is the suicide bomber. Military strategies in Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan have largely failed. As long as the enemy can mobilize one unit, they survive the day. Other strategies like backing weak African governments or supporting coups have also failed. The only successful model we have for containment is Israel. The basic premise: treat every citizen like a terrorist.

The basic anomaly that military strategists have not been able to overcome is the asymmetrical battlefield, a battlefield with no lines. Here is a 2004 definition from USAF Brigadier General Stephen Goldfein:

"By definition, it is difficult to characterize this fight. We can predict some of its attributes:

• Fleeting and mobile targets • Difficult combat ID: red, blue and gray • Specific, strategic high-value "targets" • National Command Authority participation? • Wide range of terrain • Low collateral damage tolerance • Anti-access scenarios: political, geographic, and forces • Time-sensitive effects • Low and high technology: IED's to cruise missiles • Unpredictable time, place or tempo"

Source: http://www.dtic.mil

Take this list of battlefield attributes and apply it to any US city with more than 500,000 citizens. What kind of critical mass would it take to wreak havoc on all the State capitals in the US? If young college students are disillusioned to the point of mass murder, how hard will it be to recruit under the moral authority of Islam? They recruit the disenfranchised, the lonely, and the rejected. Prisons, drug rehab centers, and ghettos become a hotbed for discontent.

Israel has succeeded largely because of its ability to draw battle lines. The asymmetrical has been made symmetrical through actual physical barriers between Gaza and the West Bank. Israel is willing to put its freedoms and the freedoms of Palestinians behind concrete walls. This arrangement has proved exceedingly difficult for those that live in Gaza but work in Jerusalem or vice versa. Families have been cut in half and rancor has grown. To call this a success is heart breaking. It is a mere perpetuation of hatred and a delay of the inevitable. We are proving that we can't live together. This is our tragedy and freedom suffers.

If the goal is preserving our culture, then we will need similar resolve. We will have to find a national backbone that enforces border security and ends the flow of illegal aliens across our borders. If you know anything about Mexico's immigration policies, they are quite porous and abide the illegal longer than our own. South America will unleash a flow of disenfranchised peoples that have more in common with Arabs than Anglos.

On the flipside, globalization, free markets, and democracy are leading to the destruction of ethnicity. Whites are marrying browns, blacks, and Orientals. Languages are being lost at an alarming rate. The differences that divide are melting away. Ironically, we are condemned to unity.

Babel was the beginning of human division. From Babel to 0 CE the world saw an increase in the number of "people groups" or ethnicities. The peak of this division was in fact 0 CE. Since that time small ethnic groups have moved into cities to be absorbed into the populous. The prophet of 0 CE was Jesus Christ. He prayed, "and the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me." Unity is the glory of God. Unity has been mandated by our Creator. Will we find the wisdom in this mandate or will we continue to destroy ourselves?

Once ethnic boundaries are destroyed only have and have not will remain. Perhaps this is why the church of 0-300 CE opted for communal living. Luke declares in The Acts of the Holy Spirit,

"Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul; neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common."

Paul bears witness that, "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise."

Next article will be a look into George Luis Borges fascinating tale, The Library of Babel. Tune in.

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