It was a Tuesday morning. Ordinarily, I don’t watch much T.V,  never in the mornings. For some reason, I just turned on the news and for the next few hours, was riveted to the T.V. It was mesmerizing, unbelievable. I was in McCall and organized a Memorial Mass for later that evening. People were in shock.

Something like it had happened before, but not all that many people remembered Pearl Harbor. That attack killed 2,500 mostly military personnel and wounded about 1,000 more.

9/11 attacks killed almost 3,000 and injured over 10 thousand, almost all civilians.

Our students do not remember that September morning, all of the freshman and most of the sophomores weren’t even born yet. They have no memory of how it was before we became once again an isolated country, fearful of foreigners, targets of hatred. They don’t remember the days when you could just go to the airport with your friends and family with you at the gate.

The day after December 7, 1941, the POTUS, FDR personally went to the Congress and asked for a declaration of war against the Japanese Empire – and won the war. Last time we declared war.

This current war is with an ideology, not a country, and can go on for decades. We’re not winning at the present time and we have lost many of the freedoms we used to have. I remember living in Washington D.C. and just walking into Congress, through any door and not being stopped.

Islam is not an enemy. These are not religious people who seek our destruction – They’re thugs and criminals. They are also young and many are well educated and come from stable families. We are at war with ignorance.

And we suffer for it. We are not winning our so-called war against terror. Nor have we spent much time in trying to understand why we are so despised.

One issue we can do something about, we don’t and that is the nearly 50 years of military occupation of what once was a free people – the Palestinians living on the West Bank of the Jordan River – the very place where Jesus began his ministry of salvation.

I am constantly perplexed and angry that the media – or the main points of it – tell us next to nothing about the daily loss of the Christians in the Holy Land. After World War 2 up until 1967, 20% of the population of the Middle East was Christian – now less than 2%. Soon the Holy Land will be a museum lost to the direct ancestors of Christians who have lived there since the time of Christ. We can also pray: To quote the 122^nd Psalm of David “sha’a lee shalom ierushalaim“, pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

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