Tim Kessler: Future holds both victory, quagmire
Tim Kessler
Published March 29, 2003 TKCP29
This is a letter not of protest, but of prophecy.
We will win the battles of Basra and Baghdad.
We will then have our very own West Bank, only ours will be 166,000 square miles larger than the one Israel occupies.
We will then have our very own Northern Ireland; only ours will have 23 million more people.
We will then have completed our very own Soviet-style invasion, setting up a puppet government that is hated by its populace and is mistrusted by the international community. We will be surrounded by nations whose teeming multitudes, and often their leaders, hate us and seek to do us harm. Even our friends and allies will seek our failure and humiliation.
I don't judge this future. I only foretell and accept it, just as I now accept the prophecy of Adm. Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear Navy. When asked what he thought the future held, Rickover replied, "Oh, I think we'll probably end up destroying ourselves, but we're not the most important thing in the universe."
I was shocked then. I'm not anymore.
As it is the season of Lent, I'll close with the words of a chant/song from the ecumenical Taize Community in (of all places) France. The melody, like the words, is haunting but deeply comforting.
"Within our darkest night," they sing, "you kindle the fire that never dies away, that never dies away." Repeat as often as needed.
Tim Kessler, Vergas, Minn., is retired from the Minnesota Air National Guard.