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In his 1951 farewell address to the United States Congress, General Douglas MacArthur grimly stated his thoughts about the global conflicts in which he had played a major role. Speaking as a life-long military man—a commander in some of modern history’s fiercest battles—he put the entire weight of his experience into his observation that, although mankind has from the beginning of time sought peace, all efforts for international peace have ultimately failed. Chillingly, he warned: “If we will not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door.”

There is an old proverb that “You don’t miss the water until the well goes dry.” We are often taken by surprise by some occurrence, event or development that should have been obvious, but which was somehow overlooked or simply not acknowledged until it befalls us.

Are the “Dark Ages” creeping up on Europe once again? The news and opinion pages are full of dire headlines. Some are taking the demise of a unified Europe as an impending inevitability. But is that really what comes next? Or is there more to the story?

“I know that there is only the smallest measure of inspiration that can be taken from this devastation. But there is a passage in the Bible from Isaiah that I think speaks to us all at times like this. ‘The bricks have fallen down but we will rebuild with dressed stone; the fig trees have been felled but we will replace them with cedars.’ That is what we will do. We will rebuild and we will recover…” So spoke United States Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, on September 12, 2001, in response to the shocking terrorist attacks the day before.

Before the world-changing events of 9/11/2001, Americans’ exposure to terrorism was mostly secondhand—perhaps watching video images of a bombed-out Oklahoma City building in April 1995, or reading newspaper stories of a botched World Trade Center bombing in February 1993. Millions, however, on that momentous Tuesday morning of September 11, were watching live television coverage of one burning skyscraper, when another jet suddenly appeared—and then crashed into the second WTC tower!