Authors: Ruth Francisco
The cities were in a state of siege.
Suicide bombers stalked the streets, throwing themselves into markets and hospitals and police stations.
Local and state government officials begged the citizens to stay home and leave security issues to local police and the National Guard.
No one listened.
Everyone who had a gun prepared to use it.
Armed militia from the left and from the right, Islamic and
Christian,
attacked one another.
Mosques and synagogues went up in flames.
Everyday the newspapers were filled with headlines of murder: Mortar Attack Kills Three, Injures Ten in Toledo; Thirty Killed, Seven Wounded in Suicide Bombing in West Hollywood; Car Bomb in Tulsa Kills Three, Injures Twenty; Chlorine Container Detonates Killing 5,000, Injuring 20,000; Ultra-light Aircraft Crashes into John Hancock Building in Boston; Homemade Bomb in Brooklyn Kills Four, Injures Twelve; Roadside Bombs Kill Ten, Injure Eighty in San Francisco.
It was like the stories we used to read about the war in Iraq.
Now it was here.
America was in a civil war.
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At first our renegade army was made up of women, homosexuals, and ardent Christians who found it impossible to live under
Sharia
law and escaped to Mexico, but now thousands have joined us.
The ex-governor of California, a former actor who seemingly rehearsed his pugilistic role in violent movies, leads the government in exile as if he were Alexander the Great, born to conquer Persia.
I now understand how tens of thousands of men can follow their leader into a battle in which they are almost certain to die.
The desperate soul has no will of its own.
It hears only the voice of its commander.
Our legions grow stronger every day.
We are relatively safe here in the mountains.
The roads here are mule trails with a few poorly maintained gravel roads.
Deep arroyos and caves provide us with hiding places if it comes to that.
The mazes of canyons and house-sized boulders are surprisingly good for training in urban warfare.
We live as the Taliban once lived.
The Mexican government, which to this point has remained neutral in the war, has so far paid no attention to us.
Here, and in camps closer to the border, armies of thousands train, and are then deployed across the border to fight.
The Islamic fighters have claimed most of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio and most of California.
They claim Detroit as the capitol of The Islamic States of America.
Fighting is fierce in New York, New Jersey, and Florida.
The United States Army has been just as unsuccessful at fighting guerrilla war in American as it was in Iraq and Vietnam.
They are reluctant to use tanks and bombs in their own cities, against their own people.
I wonder if this war might have never happened if they had had the same qualms about killing Iraqi civilians and destroying Iraqi homes.
It is too late to wonder how we could have avoided this horrible war.
We can now only hope one day it will end.
Fortunately my parents escaped before the nuclear bomb detonated in LA.
Perhaps my disappearing made them take my warning seriously.
A few months ago I got word they are safe in the San Bernardino Mountains, along with thousands of other refugees.
As before, my parents work tirelessly to provide food for the refugees, hijacking truckloads of produce from the fertile valleys below.
Alex keeps me informed.
He was wounded in the Battle of Trenton, but has healed and rejoined government forces trying to maintain possession of the Eastern corridor.
After strategic bombing of Brooklyn and parts of New Jersey, they have rooted out most of the
jihadist
enclaves.
Of course, thousands of innocent Muslims have died as well.
Thousands more have been rounded up and sent to makeshift internment camps at army bases that were closed in the nineties.
I think about Peter often.
Yet the young woman who with every breath yearned for the heat of her lover’s body, who imagined every breeze was his kisses on her neck, is now as unreal as were her fantasies.
She lives only in my memory, but I have not forgotten her.
Sometimes I think all the best Hollywood love stories take place during war.
War restricts choice.
Restricted choice makes love fiercer, more precious.
War makes love worth dying
for,
love makes it possible to fight.
If I didn’t think one day I would see Peter again, it would make it harder to do my job.
I don’t know if I could go on at all.
When I feel weak and discouraged, I think of Anne Frank, her courage and spirit.
She has been with me since this all began in Amsterdam, involved in a way I don’t understand.
I feel somehow I’m fighting for her.
Many Mexicans have joined our cause, and in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona our support is great.
We are pushing the Islamic
jihadists
into the center of the country.
But the war is long from over.
Now we prepare to take back California.
My superiors are negotiating with the Mexican government, and it appears once we begin to take on California, they will give us troops and support from the Mexican army.
They know when the war ends, the map of the United States will change, and wouldn’t mind if Mexico took back some of its lost territory.
This too I could never have imagined as a young woman—a new U.S. map.
Canada remains neutral, but has rounded up all its Muslims and sent them to internment camps.
No doubt they will be vilified in twenty years for human rights violations.
Perhaps in sixty years, they will pay reparations the way the United States did to Japanese U.S. citizens interred during World War II.
Right now, there is not a peep from Amnesty International or other human rights watch groups.
We purchase arms from Latin and South American countries, machine guns and hand grenades we once gave or sold to them.
The God of War has a sense of humor.
It is astonishing to see truck loads of weapons come up through Guatemala from Colombia, all American made.
Some arms are a half century old, but they still work fine.
We store munitions in a
Tarahumara
log cabin built a hundred years ago inside a cave at the bottom of a moss-lined gorge.
Until we need them.
There is good news from Europe.
Like Hitler, the UNI has spread itself too thin, trying to expand on too many fronts.
I wonder why is it no one ever seems to learn lessons from history, particularly in war.
The Islamic army, which had crossed the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco, has been driven out of Spain.
Islamic armies, caught in ethnic fighting in Iraq and Syria, have not been able to reenter Turkey.
Tribal wars in Northern Africa and in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are sapping the UNI organization, confusing loyalties.
Drought and starvation have depleted both sides.
In Europe, Germany finally woke up and flexed its might, ruthlessly rooting out Islamic extremists, taking control of the Islamic Republic of Holland, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, and Denmark.
Once Germany put its mind to war, the Islamists had no chance.
The oft humiliated nation had a job to do—to save Europe—and the country threw itself into the cause with mad fervor as if seeking redemption.
Likewise, when France and England saw Germany shirk off its timidity, they too adopted what in other times might be considered fascist policies.
Any Islamic resistance is dealt with lethal force.
No one pays any attention to the Geneva War conventions.
Someday we will tremble in horror at the tens of thousands of innocent Muslims who have been killed.
Now it only feels necessary and inevitable.
Here in America, I know we will prevail.
Already the
jihadist
fervor is fading.
I don’t think the Islamists ever really understood how vast our country is.
Success in Detroit and Dearborn does not translate to success in Iowa or Oregon.
In the end I wonder what kind of government we will have.
How will we begin to rebuild our ravaged cities, our rubble filled streets, our bridges and subways?
If we have a democracy, it will likely be conservative and Christian.
A theocracy of some sort.
It is hard to imagine we will ever again be a country that embraces people of all races and all religions.
Freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom to bear arms (and bare arms)—will these
be
included in our new constitution?
Yet, if we did not believe we were fighting for all of these freedoms, we could not fight at all.
What else is worth fighting for?
When you hear us come into your town, when you hear my name shouted in the streets, I hope you will step outside, throw off your head scarves, and join our cry for freedom.