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The Book - Mirror to a Nation
About the Book | PrefacePreface
We are all given an opportunity in life to learn as we go through our living journey. We all have an important God given life and every one of us has a great deal to teach everyone else. Everyone should write a book about what they have experienced in life and we should all read it. Let me be one of us who writes.
I was once in a war in a place called Viet Nam. It reminds me of the war we now have against terrorism. Modern terrorists do not begin to compare to the tenacity, resourcefulness and dedication of the Viet Cong guerrillas. There was constant ruthless terrorism in Viet Nam against the civilian population, the government and the U.S. Military. In being terrorists to us of course, they were heroes to their own. They turned everyday things into weapons of war. I have imagined what those enemy combatants that I once met over there, would do living among us here today. How would they turn our gasoline against us, the gunpowder for sale in our sporting goods stores, the speeding cars in our highways and so much more? One could go on for days counting the ways in which we are vulnerable to soft-kill tactics. Would they be able to hide in underground cities over here, as well as they did over there? Do we really understand how difficult it is to fight an enemy that hides underground? Our military knows it well, they lost the Viet Nam war to an underground army. That is why a bunker-buster nuclear bomb is being developed now.
The prison inmates in New York City’s Riker’s Island were also able to turn everyday things into weapons of war. And they were also guerrilla fighters against an adversary of police and courts that overwhelmed them with power. They were criminals to us of course, and they were, but to themselves they were survivors of oppression. I can’t help but to think that perhaps we were not a hundred per cent right, when we fought the enemy in Viet Nam, just like I can’t help but to thing that perhaps we are not absolutely right in how we dispense justice here. Are we in error when we take petty criminals and run them through a criminal justice system that turns them into hard core felons? Are we mass producing a growing criminal class? Could our error grow so big that we could face guerrilla war here one day.
I saw the illegal drugs traffic, while working in the South Bronx. Little packets of cocaine and heroine with name brands like blue tape and red tape we being offered in countless street corners. I saw it, the residents saw it, the police saw it; it is a major national industry. We all know it. Yet, we have a war on drugs. The terrorists are winning.
I have a friend who came from somewhere south of here. He traveled here on vacation with a temporary visa. He decided to stay. Fifteen million others decided to come and stay. They live in the shadows. We call it immigration that is illegal; part of that national lawlessness that we pretend to be helpless to stop. Working as a realtor, I can sell them a house and get them a loan. They can work in a super store, or the corner deli, they are almost normal. But one would have to be blind not to sense the resentment among regular citizens growing, not because they have arrived, but because millions more are on their way. Is civil confrontation and clash around the corner?
All of our problems are easy to solve, all we need is lots of money to throw at them. There’s a problem; we spent all of our money and our credit cards have been used to the max. We'll probably have a $14 trillion debt by the year 2014. We've been watching president after president promising to lower the budget deficit someday. They buy their way into office promising us a lifestyle we can not afford, and borrow their way into giving it to us. Who has a national debt repayment plan we can believe in?
I was drafted and I served. I'm proud. We fight wars with not enough soldiers. We protect our neighborhood with not enough policemen. We educate our children with not enough teachers. We house our prisoners with not enough guards. We care for families in need with not enough social workers. We protect our borders with not enough patrolmen. We do too many things with not enough of us in it. Where is our youth?
While the world wonders, who will be there when we fall? We keep telling ourselves that this is the best we can do, while we squander our resources like a drunken sailor pursuing one more drink. National service and sacrifice are not the misfortune of the weak and the small, but the duty and honor of all. God gave us clear rules to play the game and we were created to win. We are out of bound.