ON MANAGING THREATS TO OUR BELOVED COUNTRY…

ON MANAGING THREATS TO OUR BELOVED COUNTRY…

Every time there is a treat to our beloved United States of America it serves to engender a greater sense it solidarity within its diverse peoples who love and cherish this land.  Not that we do not  cherish these great United States of America already, it is just that we are so seldom challenged to evaluate how truly blessed we are as a country that sordid and cowardly acts like the recent Boston Bombing literally force us to come face to face with what we stand to lose if we allow ourselves to become degraded to the type of government, (or lack thereof), that those who hate our beloved America would ultimately reduce us to, should they ever rise to power; we would live in a state of perpetual fear!

I was sitting at home relaxed, sitting back with a cigar and  cognac when I wondered, what can the average American do to prevent such random violence?  Almost as soon as the question entered my mind so did its answer, “Virtually Nothing”.  A determined sociopath hell bent on injuring dozens, hundreds or even thousands of innocent people is more than likely way off the average person’s radar if only because while these crazed criminals  are dreaming of unbridled chaos we and those like us are striving to make a better world for ourselves and others.  It’s just the twisted way of the world these days it seems.  

Americans have to come down from their ivory towers, their manicured lawns, gated communities and ghetto fabulous realities so they can begin to see with the eyes that were given them.  Yes America has played a role in some unsettling and even unfair global events in its otherwise glorious past but that does not mean that we are now going to just lay down and allow any garden variety dissident to blow our lives to bits.  Nor does it mean we are going to organize our own anti-terrorist militia aimed at every man woman and child that our vivid imagination conceives to be plotting against our beloved country.  We are bigger than that, we are bigger than the angry coward who loses hope on humanity and chooses to punish it rather than to help it grow...

It simply means that we are going to take greater care to ensure that America adopts responsible and humane foreign policies in the future; we cannot undo what has already been done!  The tangible aspect of this recent bombing is that it could have easily affected each and every one of us personally; our mother, father, sister, brother, colleague, best friend could have been injured or killed on that day.  So in order to prevent this from happening we have to soul search to discover what acceptable role we can play in preventing bombings like this from ever getting off the ground in the future. 

Of course this is some pretty bold and adventurous language coming from a comfortable man sipping cognac and smoking a cigar on his balcony in  the heart of Washington, D.C.  Behind the scenes our armed forces, secret service and hosts of other unnamed U.S. Government Agencies are doing the tough, dangerous work of really preventing and managing terrorist threats.  One night whilst biking on the U.S. Mall in my backyard I happened upon the WWII Memorial just after it had been consecrated and read one of the most powerful things I have read in quite some time, the inscription above a fountain emblazoned with stars representing all of the men who had died in WWII  said simply, “FREEDOM IS NOT FREE”!

Written by David Vollin