“God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.”
Today I worked on more pressure canning – some soup and ground beef. I also have chicken in the fridge to use to can chicken and vegetables in a “meal-in-a-jar” recipe, I want to try. I was thinking about the horrific attacks in Israel, but I want to stay focused on projects and things I can do in my own life. The nature of the surprise Hamas attacks, using paragliders to fly over the Israeli border shows that determined people can defeat even very careful security measures. Babies, children, elderly people were murdered in cold blood and some kidnapped. The horror goes beyond words.
Some of my direct ancestors came to America in the mid 1700s and settled in PA. During the French and Indian War, that area of PA was part of the American frontier. That war was fought largely along the Virginia and Pennsylvania frontier – where settlers dealt with the threat of attacks on their homes and small communities continually. The Hamas hostage-taking made me think of how hostage-taking became a deliberate tactic by the Indian tribes in that long ago conflict too. At the end of the war, agreements were signed for the return of all settlers who had been taken hostage. Many of the children had become attached to their Indian tribal family and did not even remember their real family. Brutal tactics are nothing new.
I turned on the news this afternoon on the free app, Haystack News, and a reporter in Jerusalem was being asked about what daily life is like in the past few days. He said his family is staying at home, close to a bomb shelter, except for short trips to the grocery store for milk and bread. There have been news reports online where victims in Israel described rushing to safe rooms and shelters to try to escape Hamas terrorists. There are plenty of scenes from Gaza, where the Israelis are inflicting massive damage on Hamas (and Palestinians), because that’s the nature of war. And, while this all seems like it’s far, far away, America is not immune from terrorist attacks inside the US and all that post 9-11 worst case scenario strategizing came to mind… like sleeper cells and other awful possibilities.
Between the Biden open border threat, not knowing who all has entered our country, there were also thousands upon thousands of unvetted refugees brought here during the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, even though the WH insisted they were all vetted. Back in 2016, when Trump was running for president and made building the border wall a major campaign pledge, the usual estimated number of illegals in America cited was 11 million. Here we are in 2023 and since Biden became president he reversed the Trump border policies, resulting in floods of illegals pouring across the border every single day.
The Biden unvetted refugees and border fiasco creates a very serious national security threat.
A recent news media report cited “10 million illegals in America.” Those 11 million from 2016 are still here and some were still getting in during Trump’s presidency, even though he had imposed stricter border enforcement policies. Biden opened the border in 2021, so how on earth the estimated number of illegals is 10 million, when it was 11 million in 2016, boggles my mind. Our government probably doesn’t even have a clue how many illegal immigrants are here and how many have bad intentions, but never fear the FBI is still hunting down every single person who attended the J-6 rally, even if they didn’t enter the Capitol or break any laws. They probably spend more time on tracking “MAGA Republicans” than illegals with criminal backgrounds. Here’s a NBC report from September that states the same things as the FOX News link at the top of this blog post: Number of people on terrorist watchlist stopped at southern U.S. border has risen. That report stated that so far this year, they had apprehended 160 illegals, who are on the FBI terror watchlist, trying to enter the US. One can only wonder how many have gotten through, who weren’t apprehended.
Awful possibilities are always with us, but that doesn’t mean we need to stop living or get worked up constantly, but we should be aware of potential threats.
We all like scapegoating, because it’s easier to blame someone or some group we don’t like for being “the cause” of complex events unfolding than it is to realize there are a lot of people, countries, leaders, whose actions compete, clash, jostle for power, and even before Russia invaded Ukraine, Russia and China (and other countries aligned in their sphere) have been planning and working toward replacing the US (and the West) as the main powerbrokers on the world-stage. Russia and China have actively aided Iran, who in turn funds and facilitates terror operations all over the world – including Hamas.
President Biden came out and made a statement that the US stands with Israel, but based on past experience with Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, it’s a sure thing that the left will start trying to pressure Israel to back down and the crowd at the UN will start blaming Israel. I remember the 1972 Palestinian terrorist attack at the Olympics, where two Israeli athletes were murdered and 9 hostages were taken (and killed), so there’s a long history of Palestinian terror.
I don’t want war and I don’t think any sane person does, but the reality is events are leading in that direction and those events are being driven by various countries and entities. It’s really easy to point to some nebulous “they” and blame “they,” but the world is a big place and there are a whole lot of “theys” with a whole lot of interests. There isn’t some easy off-ramp, especially for America, who has taken on a lot of global responsibilities, that have benefited “we the people” a whole lot. Our standard of living, that we’re all used to, would not have been possible if America had been an isolationist country. I listen to a lot of people rant about how we should demand Ukraine stop the war, which a lot of anti-Ukraine Americans insist should happen, even though Russia invaded Ukraine, not the other way around and Russia doesn’t want to stop the war or withdraw from Ukraine. Likewise, Israel was attacked and has every right to defend their country and destroy the Hamas terrorist network.
After decades of “endless wars” it’s understandable that many Americans have taken an isolationist stance, but these same people likely would hate a world where America was a has-been world leader and China and Russia dominated the world. The truth is our decades of military adventures, GWOT or “democracy in the ME” or whatever name you affix to our post 9/11 foreign policy, has left a lot of turmoil in the world too, so it’s not just Russia and China trying to cause problems. We left a whole lot of power vacuums in our wake, which will likely keep blowing up in our face. We also left a whole lot of military equipment in Afghanistan and scattered about the ME, that’s going to end up in the hands of people who hate us.
While I’m definitely not like Lindsey Graham, who’s never seen a war he didn’t want to get the US involved in, with Ukraine and Israel, I do support offering intel assistance, arms and other aid. Frankly, both of these situations would be perfectly in line with the Reagan Doctrine, which I think made America stronger. Russia isn’t going to stop at Ukraine, if we abandon Ukraine. China has territorial aspirations and they’re building their military and military assets to achieve them. Iran is going to wage more terror attacks against the West and Israel. Hamas has American hostages and today I saw Biden said 14 Americans have been killed in Israel.
I’m going to circle back to the personal though, because I know how it feels to have a husband deployed to war and one of my sons deployed to Iraq in 2006. I don’t want to see other people’s sons and daughters sent off to war or my grandchildren, but frankly, Biden abandoning Americans in Afghanistan left me feeling we lost a part of our soul as a nation. It would be a terrible thing if America abandoned Israel, with Americans brutally slaughtered and some may be held hostage by Hamas.
And God forbid if something awful like what Israel just suffered happens here, I hope Americans will be able to pull together and meet the challenge. The most unsettling thing I’ve seen in the last few days has been protests, especially on some American college campuses, cheering on Hamas. Any Republican leader who rushed to virtue-signal, by embracing BLM during those protests in 2020, should be doing some serious soul-searching.
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