16 October 2006

Heads of the Hydra

I ask you forgiveness in advance. There is no reference to baseball or that idiotic football team that plays in Washignton today. Someone has asked me to think about the Global War on Terror in the context of the coming election, in a limited number of words. As you know, I think about it a lot anyway, but not in a disciplined fashion.

I have been wrestling with hydra, since the threat is always presenting a new face, but is rooted in some primordial common body.

My credentials in the War are impeccable for their longevity and participation. My ship was the first to arrive off the coast of Iran when the Hostages were taken, and the formal beginning of the crisis that slops over the end of the Cold War and continues today.

Our pal Frank was the first to notice the Soviet activity in the military distracts adjoining Afghanistan, and announced to us that he thought they were really going to invade. That struggle, our support to the heroic Mujahadeen, and our walking away from it as the Russians eventually pulled out, is too perfect a metaphor.

Suffice it to say that Shia Iraq and the largely Sunni struggle against the Soviets were the birthing grounds for the two strains of militant Islam that have produced the terrorists who haunt our dreams now.

There is an argument that our response to the terrorists has prevented another major attack here. Perhaps that is true, though by some estimates there are as many as 10,000 hezballah supporters here in America, concentrated in Detroit and North Carolina. Every ethnic group that has a grievance on the world stage lives right here, in some measure.

I would like to think that it is effective law enforcement and quick action that has kept us safe. But there is some other process at work here, and I do not know what it is.

There is an interesting argument that holds that al-Qaida over-reached, and set back the armed struggled by decades. The attacks on America wakened the easily-distracted Leviathan, eliminated the safe-havens in Afghanistan and erected a gigantic lightning rod for jihad on the Euphrates River.

The real struggle is being conducted with greater deliberation in Somalia, as the Islamic Courts take village after village. Soon that lawless land will have the Sharia code, and the training camps will be re-established.

Another attack here in the Homeland might re-energize the electorate, and that would be the worst thing for the Bad Guys before the election.

But perhaps that gives them too much credit. They are opportunists, after all, and widely decentralized. If the corporate headquarters of the global terror franchise had issued instructions to its far-flung membership to chill for a bit, and see if the Americans have wearied of the struggle.

The threat uncovered at Heathrow, and the bombings in London and Madrid suggest a more measured but implacable approach on the part of our adversaries, their version of “staying the course.”. Get the big target when the time is right, and the chances of success are best.

North Korea is a terror state. It has conducted a series of overseas operations in Japan, and Burma, and of course routinely infiltrates the Republic. With Iran looking on, the nuclear aspect of the struggle is the issue before us in these last weeks before we determine if we stay the course, or change the House and begin to issue subpoenas to the elected officials who have conducted the war thus far.

I have no policy recommendations, and my vote, living in a militantly Blue corner of this sometimes Red state, is unlikely to have any consequence. Of course I will participate. It is a duty, after all.

Still, I marvel that we have become so inured to the drumbeat of violence that we have failed to recognize one of the Hydra's head. Terror is right here, always around us, and we don't talk about it. Violence against half the world's population is endemic, pervasive, and more likely to injure someone you know or love.

I am no expert and have no credentials in this part of the terrorist threat. I watch with the same horror that you do, when the little Amish girls are lined up and executed, or the Colorado girls are molested and murdered. Those are just the two latest examples of a parade of murder that weaves its way in and out of the headlines.

There are American women who have been running all their lives from violence, and we husky males seem oblivious to how threatening this fine western world can be if you happen to be a target.

There are other places where the unspeakable is the norm, girl children murdered. Mutilation is a rite of passage in many places, some of them right where the other struggle is the hottest. Perhaps it is because it is the same thing, just different heads of the Hydra.

There is terror aplenty out there, right now. And no one seems to talk about it. Considering how pervasive it is, you would think it might be an issue. But it doesn't seem to be. I find that curious. How about you?

Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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