Nick Hahn's Blog, page 21
April 6, 2014
April 2, 2014
FOREIGN EXCHANGE by Nick Hahn, due 2014
PREFACE
Islamic extremists, if nothing else, are patient. They understand western culture and our
tendency toward complacency over time. Complacency is their ally and our Achilles heel. There will be further attacks on the US; they will be massive and destructive, exposing open arteries in our defenses created by politicizing Homeland Security policy and procedures. Western powers, most aggressively the United States, have increased global surveillance at the cost of their international standing. Phone tapping and online surveillance of every kind has become a technological art form. “Secure communications” no longer exist as the most sophisticated systems in the world, those of friends and foes alike, are being compromised in an ever-widening arc of eavesdropping by the US National Security Agency. The American oath of allegiance creates a moral conundrum for foreign service officers, does the end justify the means?
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God. [1]
March 18, 2014
FOREIGN EXCHANGE by Nick Hahn, due 2014
“Tell me, my young friend, has your privileged life in the US been maintained in Pakistan? This is not Kansas, this is not the land of milk and honey promised in your bible, 
this is reality for billions of people. The West is an economic dictatorship no less evil and brutal than a genocidal despot in East Africa or the Middle East. Man’s humanity to man breaks down when the West attempts to enforce their economic will on the rest of us. This is economic genocide, not out of the barrel of a gun or the blade of a machete. This is far worse, coming from exploitation of labor and natural resources. Kansas is not reality. Kansas is a fantasy of the West created by the ill-gotten gains of a government bent on world domination through economic warfare.”
He was raising his voice, warming to the topic. Omar was a zealot, trained and educated to hate the West and the democratic governance that supports our market economy. This was a classic confrontation between the haves and have nots, a worldwide conundrum defying easy solution. I sympathized with Omar. His difficulty was not in defining the problem, but in articulating the solution. His concern about East/West geoeconomics and politics was real, albeit ill-informed. He needed more time in Kansas.”
