The Manchurian Candidate

The chaos of war is so untenable, so unimaginable, so repulsive, so frightening to the human mind, most simply refuse to see it coming. Those who do understand something about the volatile cocktail that can trigger all-out conflagration, go about shoring up defenses. This has been the prudent way of guarding populations throughout the ages.

A new (so far, untested) template has captured the imagination of Americans with the election of Barack Obama, the underlying principle of which can be summarized by three words: appeasement, submission and (public) atonement (groveling) for past (real or imagined) sins. This, it is thought, will remove us as a threat to anyone who might be contemplating aggression.

Wars, for most, always begin unexpectedly. Perhaps this is why we don't pay much attention to the saber rattling of the likes of Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-Il. What does rattle us is an attack like the one on Pearl Harbor and the one on the WTC. Such attacks are not easy to ignore and protocol demands a response. From then on, the narrative becomes entirely predictable. Strike back, but keep the chaos away from mother.

Equally devastating (if not more so) is civil strife. It means that the leadership has failed. The only exception is if the leadership is deliberately trying to instigate civil strife for its own nefarious reasons.

Civil strife also flares unexpectedly. Suddenly there's a Trojan horse inside the gates - wonderful to look at. Once the wall has been breached, the fine art of defense becomes meaningless. That's why it was so critical for Frank Sinatra to find and neutralize the assassin, Lawrence Harvey, before he could set into motion the plot to install the Manchurian candidate as POTUS. (There's a twist at the end, but you get the point.)