Well our current global war finally made it here to Columbus, in a manner of speaking. Apparently the FBI has broken up an al quiet cell here in Columbus that was planning on attacking a local shopping mall with a bomb of some sort. I have to admit that when I first heard about this I was furious that someone was going to attack us here, in the middle of the Midwest, and a shopping mall, a target of no military value whatsoever. After a little bit of though it wasn't difficult to figure out what the targets probably where, and most of the ones I came up with are ones that I go to with some frequency. This brings really brings the war home, makes it personal. I mean really how secure can we make a shopping mall.
I am not sure how I feel about this. I mean I am not frighten, not at all, I think more angry than anything else, angry that it has come to this, angry that we have to deal with this crap. I like most of the civilian population of the world who have to deal with this crap want only to just live my life. I don't personally have anything against these people, at least not yet. Do these terrorist not understand that attacking us again in this manner isn't going to scare us away, it isn't going to destroy us, it isn't going to improve there lot in life..... It's only going to piss us off even more and then the gloves are really going to come off. There has to be some sort of peaceful solution to all of this, there has to be some sort of common ground we have to work from,
I for one do understand that the United States has made horrible mistakes with our foreign policy, but that does not justify what is happening here. We as a nation do not purposely attack civilian populations to make a point. Killing innocent civilians on purpose doesn't get you closer to God, it doesn't bring you honor, it doesn't forward your cause, it just makes your opponents really angry. Why is it that the soldiers on our side need to learn how to build schools and housing, and to build or reconstruct utilities and infrastructure, when all that our opponents have to learn is how to blow themselves up. I really regret the unfortunate effect this will probably have the local Somalian immigrant population. They came to this country to get away from this sort of thing.
I really want to find some compassion here but it keeps getting harder and harder.
5 comments:
Scott--
My sentiments exactly. I think of my friends Abdi and Sahal, Muslims, yet closer to Jesus each day, I pray.
I pray that the church will be seen as a refuge for them, and that we'll stand up for them against all injustices that we might admittedly feel like imposing on 'others' in our flesh.
Brian--
Yeah, this is really a wake up call. It forces us to see what much of the developing world has to deal with every day. Our difference, we DO have a military and we do have options. Most people are simply scared shitless; they don't really have an option to even consider vengeance.
I don't know if I agree with you that terrorism won't work. I'm obviously against it, but us taking our gloves off (I thought they already were?) might just end up bloodying our nose more than anyone else's. I mean, who are we going to invade to make them pay? This is the kind of war that we're not really cut out militarily or diplomatically to win. Which demonstrates our vulnerability. Which inspires those who conspire against us.
So, it just MIGHT work. And there may not be a damn thing we can do about it.
So, it's time to rev up our 'loving your enemies' engines as high as we can and hope Jesus fixes things.
Peace
unfortunatly John the gloves can come off a bit more, and I am afraid if that happens there won't be anyone left to bloody our noses. If there is another major attack on American soil the demand for blood will become deafening.
I do feel compassion for those in the world who are defenseless and have to put up with this crap every day. This does not mean however that we have to put up with it, nobody should have to live in fear, not just Americans, and since we can do something about it I believe we have the obligation to do something about it. The people behind these types of attacks are not the people you(John) described. What we are dealing with here is evil, these are not freedom fighters, they are not revolutionaries, they are not fighting for God, or Allah, these people are thugs plain and simple, they are wrapping themselves in religion in an attempt to give themselves legitimacy, and as a means of control, these people are not fighting for a religious principle, they want power, plain and simple, they had no problem taking money from the great satan when they where fighting the soviets and now that they percieve us as a threat to thier power base they are biting the hand that fed them. They are also take funding from opium and other drug sales. I am relativley certian they would probably fund themselves making pornography(like many of our fortune 500) if they know how lucrative it was(at least big business doesn't claim to screw us on religious grounds). These people need to be eliminated plain and simple. I do believe that God has the power to change their hearts, and while I will pray for thier salvation, I am not hopeful.
Brian--
My point about the gloves is more tactical than philospohical, I think.
Who are we going to attack?
Iran? Syria? Saudi Arabia? (Scratch that last one -- sure, they're a brutal dictatorship, but we'd invade in a heartbeat to protect the House of Saud. They cooperate with us.)
And, no, the people attacking us aren't the same defenseless people I mentioned. That wasn't exactly my point.
I'm afraid you're right that "If there is another major attack on American soil the demand for blood will be deafening." But I'm still not sure a) whose blood we can seek, b) that seeking that blood will actually make us safer, or that c) being motivated by vengeance is really wise or just -- it tends to justify disproportionate response, which is our unique (and therefore unfair [?]) perogative as the biggest boy on the block.
I remember on September 12th, a friend of mine said, "That's it. We ought to nuke the middle east and turn it into a sea of glass." Obviously, that would be unjust, but might feel pretty good.
I hope we have more discernment than that, and that we can hear the words of Jesus over the cry for blood.
I tend to find myself bouncing between mercy and the sea of glass, with that being the type of escalation I was talking about. To date with a few exceptions we have been fairly judicious with the use of our firepower, what I am afraid of is that we will start to see even more indescriminate use of that same firepower, with the possible addition of weapons we never thought we would use. Understand this is something I DON'T want to see happen. I am not an advocate of war, war is always the last option. But this war has been dropped on our doorstep, it's not the enemy is going stop if we pull out of Iraq, or Afganastan. These people have declared war on our very way of life, and are carrying it out by attacking our women and children while hiding behind thiers. They do this with little or no regard for the consequences for thier own people. Thier leaders are no different than Hitler, or Mussolini, or Tojo, and they should be treated as such.
The problem is that wars affect more than just the combatants. Unfortunatly the ones who are the most effected are never the ones who started it. So how do we eliminate the leadership with hurting the innocents the leaders are hiding behind. This is an untorable situation, and one I don't have an answer for.
I still don't see who it is we'd bomb.
I'm not trying to be particularly coy, I'm just not sure who else would be in the crosshairs. Our intel has been pretty lame to date, the President's still lying (whoops, probably unfair, or at least unproven) about the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and no one really knows for sure which people in which geographic areas are really responsible.
So, I'm not sure what the escalation would be, or if it would be worth it. I suppose we could impinge even further on human rights of prisoners, or scale back constitutional protections in the U.S. even more (perhaps remove all real restrictions on wire taps. Oh, wait, we've done that already. Shit). But I guess I haven't heard anyone propose any decent plans for getting us out of this mess, and I can't seem to accept that, even if we COULD find the bad guys, the kind of tit-for-tat retaliation we see in Israel/Palestine is going to work for us any better than it does for them.
Interestingly enough, both the far right and the far left (No, not Kerry) have begun to advocate a perspective that I predict will gain popularity with more people in the broad middle: We don't have any real national security interests in the Middle East. If we left them alone and didn't try to change them, they wouldn't have any incentive to attack us.
I'm not entirely sure what I think of that argument, but it's growing on me. Maybe iIf we let all of the Islamic nations do what they're going to do anyway (which is to be Islamic nations), they'd still sell us oil, and there'd be no reason for generations of young men to become militant radicals.
I mean, the fact that we have strip bars and shopping malls over here probably isn't enough to make people want to strap explosives to their cars and blow up our stuff. It's our insistence of exporting our values (and products and form of government) to their cultures that really pisses them off.
Which brings us to the 'problem' of our support of Israel. Which I can't even begin to think about without my brain melting.
I dunno, man. It's tough. I'm just glad that you and I will have a lot of opportunities to fight in OTHER battles TOGETHER with the real weapons God has given us.
Peace out.
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