M.J. Mollenhour - Author

Daniel Patrick Boyd.
Not a name you recognize? Hardly anyone would. That is both expected, and indicative of America’s sleeping plight. More like “sheeping” plight. Today’s news announces the drywall contractor’s arrest. This shocked his next door neighbors, too. Their neighbor is an Islamic terrorist, planning their deaths.
Reader, President Reagan and all presidents after him have neglected simple measures imperative to our country’s defense. Consider just for a moment the insanity of our immigration laws. Immigration from the Islamic world continued after 9-11 almost unabated. Profiling? You’d better believe it! Those were not 19 Irish or Finns aboard those planes. Yet, we continue to dream that we are absorbing Muslim immigrants. Of course, many are the fine people from the Middle East who come here to work hard and live peaceably among us.
We can no longer assume that all people arriving here come to enjoy our way of life and better our country. Some come to enjoy our way of life and destroy us.

This post is the second installment of this discussion. Given that jihad is not a war we may simply choose not to show up for, and given that 9-11 finally compelled America to go on the offensive, then the questions become strategic and tactical: Where and how? Iraq? Syria? Afghanistan? Work with Israel against Hamas and Hezbollah? Iran? All the above?
America is hardly alone in this. “We” in this post means the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Canada and other western countries who joined the fight in earnest. Western civilization–such as it is–is at stake. What I am about to say below is not an exercise in what the Spanish, French and Germans might say is another example of American arrogance or “unilateral action.” What I am about to say is international realpolitik.
First, forget national boundaries. These matter only to the extent that we must honor them to get cooperation we want from other nations. Jihad knows no boundaries; neither must we. For example, we respected Pakistan’s border to achieve cooperation with the Musharaff government. In the long run, Pakistani fear that we would simply take over their northwestern territory compelled them to work with us. The fear that we would not respect their border compelled their begrudging “permission” for Predator drone strikes. The point here is not whether we should have sent troops to block the passes and trap bin Laden at first. The point here is that our strength erases enemy boundaries. Don’t be ashamed of it! Don’t apologize for it! You have paid dearly to grow this powerful. Now use that power! Forget national boundaries, respecting another nation’s territorial claims only to the extent this holding back advances our own strategic or tactical purposes.
That opens up many possibilities. Where do we go to hunt down and kill terrorists? The answer is: wherever we find them. It almost didn’t matter where we first deployed in the Middle East. What matters is that we deployed, killed and conquered. The lesson is not lost on our enemies and erstwhile sometimes-allies in that region that President Bush obliterated two powerful Middle Eastern governments. Afghanistan: sure! Iraq? Perhaps Iraq was not the best next battlefield, but better there than dithering at home. It almost did not matter at all where the President chose to go. What mattered is that we awoke, saddled up, checked our water, rations and ammo, and went hunting. Quite successfully, I might add.
The next question is, “For what purpose?” What is the mission? We–meaning both the Bush and Obama administrations have answered that question by staying in Iraq, and in Afghanistan, to “stabilize” the countries and work toward a flavor of democracy strong enough to drive off both individual and and Sharia despotism. This strategic goal is qualitatively different from killing terrorists. If we mire down, it will be here, not in the conduct of our raids. More later.

Start where America should always start: with the Constitution. Add 9-11’s Pearl Harbor-like warning siren. Mix in socialist America’s frustration with 9-11 getting in the way of their advancing the socialist agenda. Really: it’s about as simple as that.

First, let’s understand The Global War on Terror (GWOT). The GWOT–in whatever form our leaders fitfully conduct the war–is our reaction to worldwide Muslim jihad. This war is thrust upon us; this is not one we may choose to sit out. It’s fought wherever terrorists set off bombs in hotel lobbies and side streets. It’s fought in safe-houses where kidnappers posture, pose, and cut a westerner’s head off on camera. So, accept this premise: you are at war. Look for it in your own neighborhood, soon.

President Bush reacted to this truth, made undeniable by 9-11, by mounting a worldwide offensive. This is good. Regardless of your party affiliation or your philosophy, unless you just hate America, credit President Bush with at least doing something.

His reward is unrelenting criticism and hatred here at home, from Americans and socialists in Europe. Why?

If the argument were over how best to fight the GWOT, that would be healthy. But, that is not the argument. The argument is best summed up as merely, “We hate George Bush.”

Yet, that makes no sense, either. George Bush is one man, only. There’s more.

The counter-reaction to President Bush’s campaigns against terrorists is socialist frustration with national defense interrupting the steady advance of the socialist agenda. In the minds of the Michael Moores and much of congress, the GWOT is a sideshow, a diversion, a nuisance. The real war is class warfare in which the government always emerges the big winner.

Newsflash, America! They have what Marx would have called the inexorable march toward communism back on track.

Second: the Bush strategy–That’s the next post.

This morning: “Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama’s nuclear adviser suggested that progress on a U.S.-Russian nuclear arms pact could help persuade Moscow to be more cooperative on Iran.” Reuters, 7-14-09, Oleg Shchedrov.

Warning, Blog readers: The slave states forced together under the ironically-named Union of Soviet Socialist Republics dissolved, but the philosophy and force that captured its unfortunate countries still exist. Russia’s Marxists couldn’t hold together their collection of captives for now, but did they simply go away? Did they shrug, say “Oh, well,” and retire? I think not.

Marxists believe that always, always, always, world events work toward communism. Thesis–antithesis–synthesis. The Marxian dialectic. The synthesis becomes the new thesis and the struggle between thesis and antithesis births the new synthesis.

But, always, the world marches toward communism, they believe. Do not for one second be fooled into thinking that Russia is now a potential ally, or, at least, a benign new democracy.

In Amazon Avenger, Jack and the CIA discover the Russians, Iranians and Chavez cooperating against the USA. “Barely fiction” describes both my Jack McDonald novels, Arcturus and Amazon Avenger.

Back to today’s headline. We exhibit weakness, offering the Russians nuclear arms reduction in exchange for their pulling back from their ties with Iran. Russia sees itself on the ascendancy, and us on the decline. Russia encourages our enemies as Russia finds them, arms them unless we protest too much, and blackmails us with threats of more havoc.

Staging a show of the form of democracy is not democracy. The outward forms of freedom are not freedom. Even the former USSR (May God keep the monster in its grave.) had a constitution.
Latin America’s Marxist dictators learned the lesson well: forget taking on the pariah status of a Kim Jong Il. Display the appearance of free elections and representative government and you will be celebrated as you lock your anaconda hold on the country. Oh, I forgot. Make socialist-sounding noises. Land reform. Rail against big American corporations. Hold the USA up as the cause of all problems. Socialists at home here will resonate to your blather and carry your PR water for you.
Hondurans saw it happening. Chavez encouraged it. Nicaragua’s Sandanista Marxists celebrated it. Honduras’s president went for it–and got more than his hand slapped.
So, why is the US government trying to prop him up, against Hondurans striving to maintain the rule of law?
Make no mistake about it. I longed for the demise of Castro; now it appears others rise up to not only take his place but to accomplish in Latin America what Castro never could. They are building a block of communist countries hostile to the USA. They hoped to add Honduras to the Satanic club.
Imagine such a coalition approached by wealthy Jihadists to smuggle people in and through Latin America. Imagine Latin American countries as a base for Jihad. The plot of Amazon Avenger is not so difficult to imagine. Would Chavez lend a helping hand to Jihad if he thought he could get away with it?

Are you conflicted over important things in your life? Sure. We spend much of our lives trying to resolve the most fundamental, meaningful conflicts, and will probably die with that unsatisfied feeling that we never got those questions answered.  Instead, we know our children will face the same “something is wrong here” sense, and never reach resolution either.  Like the movie, The Matrix.

Jack McDonald, in my novels, Arcturus and the under-construction Amazon Avenger, fights, spies, loves, kills and prays his way through many of the same conflicts as you.  For Jack, though, even as he breaks the law, and as he pulls the trigger, killing to preserve liberty, he is part of usurping the constitutional law that thinly stands between us and despotism.

Those who would make themselves kings over us deploy hatred and fear to manipulate us.  Sure, lies too, but the lies are tools to accomplish making us afraid. Afraid of others, starvation, debt, crop failure, the wrath of the gods, the air pollution index, global warming, cancer, poverty in retirement?  The frightening possibilities are endless!

Terrorists.  What does all of this have to do with terrorism?  First, know this: we should hunt down terrorist enemies and kill them wherever we find them. They are murdering raiders, circling outside our villages, darting in to slaughter, even pretending to be our friends, all the while hating us and planning our destruction.

But, seriously, statistically, they are barely a threat to your life.  The probability you will be kidnapped and beheaded is miniscule.  As horrific as 9-11 is, even those successful and dramatic kamikaze bombings left most of us largely unscathed and unaffected but for the emotions we felt.  Some took up hardened resolve and joined the fight; they have by act of will sought out direct combat with terrorists–if the terrorists can be found to fight.  But the rest of us continued living our lives mostly in the same routine as before.  We made it a point to visit Manhattan, where people brushed off the ash and dust, cleared the site, and carried on.

History will respect GW Bush’s taking action against our enemies.  So do I.  However, and regardless of which party and president predominate, we should never, never forget this truth, proven to us by history again and again.

We have as much to fear or more from our own government than from outside evil.

The tangible, bloody threat from fanatical terrorists provokes the fear their suicide-homicide vests are designed to provoke.  Terrorism works.  But, the greater, longer-term threat is to that fragile freedom the founders claimed in the Constitution.  They didn’t create liberty.  They saw it, comprehended it, and claimed it.

Now, amidst so much fear and hatred, one of our struggles is to defend that claimed liberty.  Like any earthly inheritance, it can be stolen, even if it belongs rightfully to you.

More on this later: The Better Way to View The Bush Administration’s Conduct of The Global War on Terror