Politics, Polarization, and Peace

Like every other American, I have been following the events in Boston. It broke my heart. My heart broke for the never-to-be-lived years of the three lives that were lost. What would they have done? What impacts would they have had on those around them? My heart broke for those injured in the blasts. How devastating it must be to go from an athlete who can run a marathon to never being able to walk again. How devastating for the spectators who never imagined how that day would change their lives. It was a terrible, terrible event.

In the days that followed, I had a million different thoughts running through my head. This is my attempt to put them into words:

What is the goal of every terrorist? To incite fear. It is, almost always, a violent act by a smaller, weaker group on a stronger supposed enemy. Terrorism is often politically motivated. In many recent incidents there are also religious motives as well. Terrorists attempt to evoke a reaction based upon fear. They use disproportionate means. I understand that this may not encompass every act of terror ever, but I think it's a pretty encompassing view of the objectives of terrorists. Surely 9/11 falls into this description. The Munich Olympic attacks fit this bill. London Subway bombing? Check. Oklahoma City Bombing? Yep. The goal of terrorism is fear. If the terrorists can get us to play their game, they have accomplished their goal.

Given this view on terrorism, what happened AFTER the bombing was disappointing to me. I'm not talking about neighbor helping neighbor and even stranger helping stranger. There was goodness in abundance. The people of Boston impressed me with their charity. Let me be clear, I am a patriotic American and I feel like I do have the best interest of America at heart. I do not, however, think that America is perfect. I believe we completely went about finding the suspects the wrong way. We shut down the entire city of Boston for an entire day! We essentially locked people in their homes. We drove armored vehicles down the streets of Boston and searched citizens' homes. That is NOT America! We are the home of the brave! We don't cower in our homes to some evil punks. What if, for example, someone had declined to let the swat team enter their house and search it? They would have immediately become a person of interest. We assumed everyone guilty! Additionally, when did they find the suspect? AFTER the lockdown was lifted and an ordinary citizen that had been quarantined noticed something amiss with his boat.

If I am terrorist in some far off country, or even in America, and I am watching this unfold, I am chalking this up as a win for the terrorists. With a couple thousand dollars in pressure cookers, nails, and explosives, I just brought one of the biggest cities in America to it's knees for an entire day. What cost me a couple thousand dollars cost them millions. There are those that argue, "ya, but we caught him, and one is already dead." While these two weren't suicide bombers, the same logic applies. They don't care. Dying is not a loss to them. They view it as martyrdom, and martyrdom = eternal glory. My fear is that we just incentivized similar despicable acts. If I am a terrorist, I am extrapolating what I just saw. By this logic, with 50 terrorists and $50,000, I can bring 25 of the biggest cities in America to a halt for an entire day. I could cost them billions. I could throw their still-rebounding economy for a very big loop.

Well how should we have responded? That's a fair question. Here is my opinion. This is exactly the type of thing we train special forces for. We sent a very small group of highly trained, elite soldiers and retrieved Osama Bin Laden from a heavily guarded compound. I refuse to believe that they couldn't have captured an unarmed 19-year-old, and quickly. But what about the public demand for action? How would covert special forces appease that demand? Herein lies our real problem, in my opinion. We demand that something be done, and we demand that we know exactly what it is, and we demand detailed updates every 4 minutes. This undermines our own efforts. We have to trust our highly-trained, elite soldiers to do their job. We have to trust the government to handle the situation. If we can't trust the government to do this, we have bigger issues.

America is beyond superior in terms of military might. Our problem is that we fail miserably at, and our citizens seem unwilling to, win the battle for the heats and minds. We take a short-sighted approach that yields immediate results, while failing to see that we are incentivizing exactly what we claim to be fighting in the long term.

Ok, on to polarization. Boston spurred me to think on something that I have been thinking about for years. I believe there is a polarization happening. We refer to these times as the last days. The polarization I am talking about is between good and evil. I believe that the evil are getting more evil, and the righteous are becoming more righteous. The gap is widening. There is evil everywhere. Terrorists are happening more frequently than ever. Society is choosing to abandon eternal principles. Crime, in all its varieties, is out of control. On the flip side, there are more missionaries, members of the church, and temples than ever before on the face of the earth. We have been promised that this dispensation will not fail. Just expect it to get harder before it gets any easier. Love will win. It cannot fail.

And finally, peace. Peace is a concept that we often misunderstand. I don't claim to understand it completely. Most people view peace as the absence of contention/war/etc. In a very basic sense, sure. But I believe it is so much more than that. True, enduring peace can only come from living in accordance with divine principles.  It wasn't until the Lamanites became converted to the gospel and started living its precepts that real peace was attained. It was the missions of Alma and the Sons of Mosiah that brought real peace. Probably my favorite verse of scripture is in Mathew 11:28-30. Here the Savior says,

"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

That's peace. We all labor and are heavy laden at times. So how do we take His yoke upon us? It's in the daily decisions to be better than we were yesterday. It's our conscience choice to see the evil in the world (like 9/11 or the Boston bombings) and choose a better path. It's our choosing to be the change we want to see. It's the perfect "line upon line, precept upon precept" principle. As Elder Cook so eloquently put it just days before the Boston Bombing:

"Peace comes from knowing that the Savior knows who we are and knows that we have faith in Him, love Him, and keep His commandments, even and especially amid life’s devastating trials and tragedies."
There is goodness. The principles of the gospel are for every human ever. Lasting peace is found by obedience to eternal principles. Love will always win.