The sermon in church this week was based on the scripture reading of Luke 14: 7-14. It dealt with the teachings of Jesus on humility with the 11th verse holding the key idea where He is quoted as saying "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted." At the start the priest related this story: Once there was a frog who wanted to go South and asked two geese on their migratory flight to help. The frog strung a string between his two new friends and clamped on tightly with his strong jaws. As they were flying along a hunter spotted them and shouted up, "Whose idea was that?" The proud frog opened his mouth to boast that it was he, and the hunter ate frog legs that evening. The story ended with a quote from Aesop’s Fables, "Pride goeth before the fall."
As I listened, my mind trailed back to the Newsweek article of last week that dealt with the unsuccessful hunt for bin Laden. The matter of pride seems to enter into the military’s efforts in this hunt, too. It would probably make the most sense to send in special operation units to hunt him down, units (termed "snake-eaters") that could live off the land for a long period of time and poke around the hills and caves of Afghanistan. The author says that military brass, though, doesn’t like "snake-eaters" because they don’t always follow rules or maintain spit-and-polish discipline. Instead, they would like to fight in the open and show off their firepower and new weapons. Therefore, they chose to fight in Iraq instead of Afghanistan. It’s unfortunate the military leadership hadn’t listened to the same sermon I just had.
I’ve never forgotten outgoing President Eisenhower’s warning that we should beware of the military-industrial complex. To further give a person food for thought our public television station last night on their America at a Crossroads series ran a show titled "Inside America’s Empire." It was indicated that the U.S. has a military presence in dozens of countries. The countries of Colombia, Georgia, Philippines, and another in Africa were featured and described to varying degrees our country’s involvement there. Whenever I see or hear the word empire I can’t help thinking of the Roman Empire and its fate.
