Surrounded!

Surrounded!
Vol: 15 Issue: 23 Monday, December 23, 2002

According to legend, when the encircled Ranger Battalion outside Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge were given the news they were completely surrounded by the German Army, the battalion commander snorted, “We’re paratroopers. We’re supposed to be surrounded.”

According to recent polls, America is also surrounded — if not by enemies, certainly not by friends. Until convinced their own individual nations were at risk, America’s erstwhile ‘allies’ have proved themselves quite content to allow Washington to bear the risks (and expense) of protecting them while they protest they don’t need protection.

Until they realize that they do, that is.

To the north is Canada, claimant to North America’s Moral Superiority Award (says the Toronto Star’s Gwyn Dyer) — said moral superiority derived from the fact Canada doesn’t go around imposing its will internationally.

(Canada has a military the size of the Los Angeles Police Department).

In any case, Ottawa has adopted the global default standard of opposing the US unless persuaded otherwise by enlightened self-interest.

Washington pleaded with Ottawa to beef up its immigration policies but was rebuffed for no discernible reason apart from the fact the request came from the United States.

It is certainly in Canada’s interests to protect itself from global terror, but its ‘morally superior’ worldview won’t let it.

As a consequence, even the Canadian Security Intelligence Service now admits that Canada is a haven for terrorists seeking ways to strike the United States.

Both Canada and Mexico to the south oppose US action against Iraq. Not because Saddam shouldn’t be toppled, but because both nations fear retaliation if they go along.

To the extreme south, South American drug terrorists threaten to take over most of the continent.

In Venezuela, an oil refinery strike is threatening to tear that nation’s shaky government apart. Hugo Chavez has already been deposed twice but has somehow managed to hang on to power.

Venezuela depends on oil exports for 78% of its Gross National Product. While the United States is about to fight a war in Iraq that some say is over oil, America gets more oil from Latin America than from the whole of the Middle East.

While America gets seven percent of its oil from Iraq, it gets thirteen percent of its total imports from Venezuela.

Colombia extended its state of emergency into mid-2003 yesterday as its war with dozens of armed terrorist groups, mostly backed by the competing cocaine cartels.

Intelligence has confirmed that al-Qaeda has been operating out of Colombia with support from some of these groups.

In Argentina, the economy is in shambles. Conditions are so bad that on average, twenty-seven children under five die of hunger every single day, according to a study led by the University of Buenos Aires and the Society of Pediatricians.

To America’s West is the Japanese economic basket case and beyond that, the terrorist infested Muslim empire of Indonesia and Malaysia.

As we go further West (until it becomes East again) we find the North Koreans. North Korea said today that it had removed the equipment that international inspectors installed more than eight years ago to make sure that it would not make use of its large stockpile of plutonium to produce nuclear weapons.

Once unsealed, North Korea has enough plutonium to construct several new bombs immediately. It doesn’t need to generate more before it can begin assembly.

The North Koreans tested the Taepodong missile in 1998, firing a drone OVER the Japanese mainland and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. US intelligence determined the North Korean test puts the outskirts of Alaska within reach of Pyongyang. The Taepodong is nuclear payload-capable missile.

The Taepodong2 — already out of the development stage, has a range of 6000 kilometers.

Directly to the north of Pyongyang are the inscrutable Chinese. Lt. Gen. Xiong Guangkai was rebuked by National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice last week for a remark Xiong made to a reporter to the effect that America would not go to war with China over Taiwan because “you care more about Los Angeles than Taipei” — a not-too-veiled threat to nuke Los Angeles if it came to war.

Assessment:

Take a second with me, and in your mind’s eye, picture a map of the world. (Or go get one. I’ll wait)

See South and Central America? Utterly unstable, infested with narco-terrorists, insurrectionists, poverty and political unrest. (And THAT is where most of America’s imported oil comes from).

To the north, Canada. A buffer zone against a land attack from Russia, but a haven for Islamic terrorists who encounter no difficulty entering the country as refugees and then vanishing into the population to await orders.

Now, look to the east. Japan, China, North Korea, Pakistan, India, Indonesia — not too encouraging.

Shift your gaze across the Atlantic towards Europe. The UK, France, Germany . . .see them? Further east is the Russian Empire, to the south the Middle East. To the extreme south, the continent of Africa. To the extreme south and east, Australia.

So, what’s the point to the exercise? Just this. Find America’s friends. No matter how charitably one views America’s traditional allies, the list of nations one could call unqualified friends of American policy is a short one.

At the top of that list is Israel. And it’s surrounded, too.

In that light, a story we reported at the OL website yesterday takes on new significance. According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project survey, the United States of America is the most religious of the wealthy industrial nations.

Americans are about TWICE as religious as Canadians and many times more inclined to faith than Europeans or the Japanese. And the vast majority of those who identified their religion claimed Christianity.

As hard as it is to believe by looking around, and no matter how hard both secularists and Bible-believing Christians both deny it, America is the world’s only Christian nation. It is the only nation in the history of the world to be founded on the principle of Divine Decree.

The Declaration says that God created all men equal, and that our rights are granted by God and therefore cannot be revoked by the State.

Most of the signatories to that document were devout, Bible-believing Christians. In the earliest years of the Republic, most states required a profession of Christian faith as a prerequisite for holding elective office.

Similarly, Israel was founded on the principle of Divine Decree. While America bases its system of government on Divine Decree, Israel bases its right to exist on the Word of God.

America is surrounded. Its enemies hate it with a white-hot fury, but few could identify exactly why, except that it is too rich, too generous and too smug. Even though America historically shared (and shares) that wealth and comfort with all in need and any who ask.

Israel is also surrounded. Its enemies hate it with a similar white-hot fury, but few can identify exactly how Israel earned that hatred, apart from daring to exist as a Jewish state under the authority of God.

Israel and the US share the same Bible, the same God, the same system of government and the same respect for individual rights.

And the same enemies. Everybody else.

During the Tribulation, the Bible says that the antichrist seizes control of the global government and launches his own war. He has only two targets.

Christians. And Jews.

Do the math.

Issues of the Omega Letter Intelligence Digest during Christmas week will be open to non-subscribers. Merry Christmas