How my son Mike came to recognize the wickedness in Washington

By Donald Hank

A few years ago my son, a child of divorce, remarked to me that he was thinking about joining the military. I worried about him doing that not because I am unpatriotic but because years ago I recognized that the US government had for many years been risking young American lives for questionable causes to say the least, and worse, since Clinton, our military misadventures had pointedly redounded to the persecution and murder of Christians and to the burning of countless churches in the Muslim world. I began to have the sneaking suspicion that this was not an accident.

As I read report after report on how Washington had given this or that group guns and materiel which later were used against us and against minorities in their countries, I became so impacted by this phenomenon of American officials' complicity with the murder of good and innocent people that I began warning about it at my blog. That was several years ago.

Here are some examples:

http://laiglesforum.com/ghadaffi-dies-of-propaganda-overdose/2772.htm

http://laiglesforum.com/i-told-you-so-again/2697.htm

http://laiglesforum.com/my-government-is-killing-me/2159.htm

http://laiglesforum.com/spare-me-the-crocodile-tears-when-northern-africa-explodes/2215.htm

http://laiglesforum.com/how-western-powers-abet-christian-persecution/2513.htm

http://laiglesforum.com/us-media-cover-up-ivory-coast-massacre-details/2398.htm

http://laiglesforum.com/why-i-am-not-on-our-side-any-more/2174.htm

http://laiglesforum.com/the-far-left-connection-to-the-near-east-rebellion/2224.htm

http://laiglesforum.com/2286/2286.htm

http://laiglesforum.com/just-as-i-told-you-sharia-law-coming-to-libya/2774.htm

I don't flatter myself to imagine that I was the first to notice this, but I can assure you it was almost a full year after I posted my first blog on this that another author and then another and another ventured to mirror my thinking in writing. I can also tell you that web sites that had once posted most or all of my material started passing on this kind of article.

It seems that conservatives too have their own political correctness. I can't help but think it is hypocritical of them to criticize the msm for spiking stories and ignoring facts when they themselves do the same sort of thing, and in ways that are often much more damaging and do more harm than the msm themselves.

In view of this generalized resistance to this kind of truth, I decided that if I should try to explain this to Mike, he might well react like a typical teenager who thinks his conservative dad is a nut and wind up doing just the opposite of what Dad recommended (I remembered my block headed self as a boy). So I decided to leave it up to God to set the stage for discovery. Something told me I would somehow some day get the golden chance to give him an object lesson. My faith is often weak, but this was something I decided God would definitely do, not so much for me but for Mike, who has a kind heart and is a polite and obedient boy – with all the usual caveats of course. God has His eye on him.

Years passed and when Obama was elected, sensing trouble ahead, my family and I decided to settle in my wife's home country of Panama. We moved in July of 2009. We asked Mike to join us but he wanted to be with his mom and his buds at home. I respected that. He came to see us every year for a while.

Then about 2 years later, we decided to go back to the US for a visit. We stayed for a month and saw Mike several times a week.

On one occasion we took him to Old Country Buffet in Lancaster, PA, one of our favorites before our move to Panama.

We sat down at a table and our server came to introduce herself. She turned out to be an Egyptian girl I had met years earlier. (Being a foreign language buff, when I meet someone who speaks with an accent under circumstances like that I always try to ask where they are from – trying hard not to appear too giddy or gauche about it – to see if they speak a language I may have learned or studied. So at that time I had learned she was a Coptic Egyptian and attended a Coptic church in Lancaster County, which I had also attended a few times.)

This particular day she recognized us and we started to chat. I must admit I figured this might be my chance to give Mike a peek behind the wizard's curtain.

This was during the brief period when the US-backed Islamist Morsi was in power. So I asked her about her family in Egypt and she told us that her husband had traveled back home to visit his parents, but when he got off the plane and was going through customs, they asked him where he was headed and when he mentioned the name of the village, apparently a known Coptic stronghold, he was immediately put on another plane and returned to the US. By the US-backed regime.

I asked her questions designed to elicit the role of the US government in all of this. I said, for example, that it seemed strange to me that the US government would be supporting an anti-Christian regime of this kind. I was being coy. It didn't seem strange at all to me. By that time, I had already written all or most of those above linked warnings and it would have seemed stranger to me if Washington were in any way helping persecuted Christians anywhere in the world.

She admitted that was strange. I then asked her if she didn't sometimes have the feeling that the US government is actually using the US military to support anti-Christian regimes in the Middle East. I knew she had to see it.

She quietly nodded yes. I knew it hurt her to have to come to terms with this truth, especially before a group of customers in her restaurant. But hurt is the trigger for revolt and I believe America needs to revolt and people need to hurt and cry often in front of their friends and loved ones before people can be motivated to do what needs to be done. Jefferson said we needed a revolution every generation. We're 200 years past due. Christians have been busy waiting for the Second Coming since 1776. I guess they didn't believe Jesus when He said no one knows the day nor the hour. They forget that God uses men to do His work, fighting men like Gideon and Joshua who never once thought about sitting around and waiting for God to do the fighting all by Himself.

After she left, I asked Mike if he still was considering joining the military. He said "no way."

Kids want to do the right thing. It's just that they come into a world where good is called evil and evil is called good and they need to meet evil face to face and naked, without its Joker's smile before they recognize it for what it is.

Mike met it that day, Lord be praised!

And I think our Egyptian friend was also able to see it more clearly at that point. I hoped it would stimulate her and her friends and family to talk about their hurt and deep disappointment with the American Dream, not only among themselves but to others.

Recognition – always deeply painful – is the first step in combating evil. Communicating that recognition to others is the next. They won't want to hear it. Talk anyway. Let it out. Painful words from a broken heart are more powerful than bullets.

The hour is late and the revolution is pending, but somehow I don't think God minds waiting just a little more. Until we're ready. Not a moment sooner. Not a moment later.

We'll know when the time comes. I know we will. We have a kind heart and are a polite and obedient people – with the usual caveats.

God has His eye on us.

© Donald Hank