FOREIGN EXCHANGE by Nick Hahn (due 2015)

PREFACE

Muslim ghettoes are incubators of extremist ideology, dissimulated theocracies based upon convenient interpretations of the Quran. It’s not about religion, it’s about power. The four horsemen of the apocalypse, conquest, war, famine and death are means to an end, weapons in a terrorist arsenal. Young men and women from developed countries, often educated, are attracted to this sophistic alchemy; shocking family and friends, fueling global headlines, and inspiring peers with a persuasive “I dare you”.

Complacency in the developed world plays into the hands of patient extremists. Further attacks against US interests are inevitable; they’ll be massive and destructive, exposing open arteries in our defenses created by politicized policies and procedures at Homeland Security. Western powers, including the United States, increased global surveillance at the cost of their international standing. Phone tapping and online snooping became technological art forms. “Secure communications” no longer exist. The most sophisticated systems in the world, those of friends and foes alike, are compromised in an ever-widening arc of eavesdropping by the US National Security Agency. The US oath of office creates a moral conundrum for foreign service officers, “does the end justify the means?”

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) 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]”