In 2006 a leftist leader, Evo Morales, was elected president of Bolivia, a country known for its large cocaine exports but is relatively poor.  Evo promptly reached out to America’s enemies, including Iran.   At the time I wondered why.  What had the U.S. done to Bolivia?  But, I consoled myself, if Evo wanted to hate America, there was no reason to worry about it, because Bolivia’s economy was largely based on poor farmers growing cocaine.

Even though Evo is out of power, his outreach resulted in an Iranian military presence in Bolivia and a school of “asymmetric warfare” that Iran helped create.  Iran also has missiles and drones in Venezuela, another country you might have largely dismissed as a pressing threat, but those missiles and drones can reach Florida.  What happens when Iran gives the Marxist ideologues in Venezuela nuclear weapons?

But do we really have to worry about Iran?  We have the nuclear triad — land based missiles, submarines, and planes.  Surely Iran won't mess with us?  Our nuclear force is a protective fence behind which we can feel safe.

Or can we?

Talking of fences, an obvious failure was on October 7, when Hamas terrorists bulldozed the fence separating Gaza from Israel, and came across on motorcycles and in pickup trucks.  They also bypassed the fence on paragliders and boats.  Once in, they successfully killed over 1,000 people, wounding thousands more, and even killed 40 babies (many decapitated) in one kibbutz alone.

Hamas had shown imagination in the past when dealing with the Israeli security fence—they’ve dug tunnels under the fence, launched rockets over the fence, and finally, in the invasion a few days ago, they simply bulldozed over the fence.

Israel thinks of itself as a place where Jews can defend itself, but it also has strict laws regarding gun ownership.  There was no second line of defense when the fence was breached.  Behind the Gaza fence had long been a growing tsunami, an enemy that indoctrinated its children and trained from their early years to use weapons.

Another story of a fence:

Sgt. Stephen Russell was sitting in his guard booth outside a barracks in Beirut. He was one of about 1,600 Marines who’d been sent to Lebanon as neutral peacekeepers but found little peace to keep. He says he heard something snap behind him and a diesel engine revving.
He turned.
What he saw, at 6:22 a.m. that bright Sunday in the fourth decade of the Cold War, was the future, coming straight at him, in the form of a 5-ton truck. It was Oct. 23, 1983, a day Ronald Reagan called the saddest of his presidency, maybe his life.

The truck would shatter the Marines’ building with a bomb more powerful than 12,000 pounds of TNT — the biggest non-nuclear explosion since World War II, the FBI concluded.

It would kill 241 servicemembers, including 220 Marines — the Corps’s bloodiest day since Iwo Jima....

Again, the enemy had imagination.  On the American side, it blows one’s mind to learn that “the sentries’ rifles, as ordered, were unloaded.”

On September 11, 2001, 15 Muslim men flew passenger planes full of Americans into skyscrapers and into the Pentagon.  Once past the “fence” — our border, or airport security — these fanatics had a killing field.

Enemies are proliferating, even in our own hemisphere.  We must worry even about small countries — Nicaragua has welcomed Russian troops, just to take one example.  These countries export revolution; Cuba, for example, waged war in Africa.  Can we be safe with an ideological enemy 90 miles from Florida?

Can the U.S. hide behind a fence?

Our efforts to deal with threats — from Afghanistan, Iraq, and the communist invasion of southeast Asia failed, partly due to our own politicians, including President Biden.  It could be argued that we have no choice but isolationism behind some sort of layered defense.

How about our allies — can they trust us?  Our record isn’t great.  For example, Iran, which is now allied with Russia and China, used to be an American ally; the former Shah was pro-American.  When he was ousted by the Ayatollahs, the American treatment of him was appalling.  He had cancer, but President Jimmy Carter’s administration was unwilling to allow him treatment in the U.S.  When the Shah received an invitation for treatment in Egypt from President Sadat, the Americans tried to dissuade him — his presence in Egypt, he was told, could endanger the peace process in the Middle East.  At that point an American emissary did mention Houston, Texas as a possibility.  The Shah wrote this line in his autobiography:

I did not have to think very hard.  For the last year and a half, American promises had not been worth very much.  They had already cost me my throne and any further trust in them could well mean my life.

So, he went to Egypt.

There have been recent uprisings for freedom in Nicaragua, Cuba, and Iran.  Without any possibility of American support, they of course failed.

Can we trust our leadership to protect us?  Obviously not.  We don’t even have an effective barrier at our southern border (a record number of suspected terrorists crossed last year), and known terrorists are being caught at our northern border too.  No doubt, many get through undetected.

Even with a united country and a trustworthy leadership, we would have a big problem.  In our current situation, how do we defend ourselves?

Image: Free image, Pixabay license, no attribution required.