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]