13 Hours

I made a point of seeing the movie 13 Hours this week, because I want to encourage Hollywood to fill our theaters with great films that honor real heroes, and because spending $8.50 on a ticket to this movie was my own small way of telling those guys “thank you” for their fight on that September night three years ago in a city until now none of us had heard of, in a country few of us ever thought about.

If you haven’t made a point of seeing this film, you should.

It gives the account of a handful of American soldiers, holding their ground against innumerable enemy attackers, wave after wave of them, for 13 hours in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012.

This is how it is now.

It’s a handful of us, it seems, unequipped, unprepared, and unsupported, against a horde of hate-filled extremists, ready to kill and willing to die, who won’t just go away, who won’t just stop, who won’t “see the light,” no matter how much we pray for our enemies.  

The world is mad with hatred for America, for Christians, for Jews. The United States of America continues to claim its presence in many countries where chaos and war rule the day in the everyday lives of the people who live there. We set up embassies and secret CIA outposts. Our ambassadors give speeches and shake hands with people who may or may not desire to murder them, and American soldiers diligently work to spot the bad guys and protect our own.

Recent terrorist actions in Paris and in the U.S., the destructive violent sprawl of ISIS or ISIL, and the desperate situation faced by the men featured in 13 Hours open our eyes to the reality that deep-seated hatred of our nation and of things we know to be good does not merely simmer below the surface of men’s hearts, but combusts, taking lives, often in our very midst. This is the world we live in now.

It’s you on that roof now, holding the line of defense against men who sneak, soft-footed, in the dark, men who when they have you, may not be merciful and kill you, but may instead put you in a cage and burn you alive, imprison you for years and torture you, or crucify or decapitate you.

This hatred is real. This evil is happening.

Many of us have to come to terms with the fact that this is how it is now.

Including me.