When challenged | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

    In the wake of the grossly unfair jury verdict (according to Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson) recently handed down in the Florida George Zimmerman trial, we are hearing all kinds of proposals to get rid of the "stand your ground" laws. We should be expected to turn and run (or at least retreat) from anyone who threatens us. Good way to avoid confrontation. And why shouldn't we?? Our government does it at the national level. We draw a "red line" in the sand and when it is crossed we seem surprised and befuddled.

    As an aside, one interesting thing that hasn't happened is the anti-gun folks trying (yet again) to take our guns away from us following the shooting of Treyvon Martin in the aforementioned case. Maybe they didn't want to be too closely associated with the two skin merchants mentioned above (couldn't blame them for that.).

    The temporary abandonment of our Embassies, etc. across the Middle East and North Africa in the face of possible (anticipated??) violence by Al Qaeda supporters would be a case in point. Al Qaeda... Wouldn't that be the group that we have, according to the Anointed One, pretty much brought to the edge of extinction??. Didn't we pretty much decimate their leadership?? The only thing missing from the Anointed One's pronouncement was the "Mission Accomplished" banner. But there must still be somebody left in their camp. And it would be someone with access to a phone. They start making unpleasant noises over the phone and he next thing you know the U.S. is retreating. One of the differences between them and us is that when they make threats, they intend to keep them. When we make threats the rest of the world already knows that our pronouncements amount to little more than self serving rhetoric. (How much do you suppose all that hot air coming from the Anointed One contributes to global warming??)

    We are spending a ton of money to "evacuate" our embassies and that is only the latest example of the "bad guys" taking advantage of us. I think back to the breakup of the Soviet Union during the Reagan Administration. We got them into a spending race that there was no way they could win. They were well on their way to the poor house when they saw the writing on the wall and decided to pack it in. In that case we spent a ton of money to get them to spend a ton of money; more than they had or were willing (or able) to borrow. Well guess what. The Al Qeada folks are doing that very thing to us. One big difference is that they are doing it "on the cheap". They spend a little money to bring down the Twin Towers and we spend a ton of money establishing the TSA. Now they spend a little money communicating with each other about "planned" attacks on US facilities in the Middle East and North Africa and we are evacuating our diplomatic posts - surely at great expense. It's a wild guess, but I believe that for every dollar the bad guys spend "tweaking" us, we probably spend millions (or maybe billions) trying to respond. Extrapolate from those strategies and what becomes rather clear is that they will soon be getting us to the same spot where we got the USSR to all those years ago. Between them and the Anointed One who is bound and determined to hand out all the money we can collect from our own folks as well as all the money we can borrow, we'll get there. Pretty soon we are financially unable to resist the terrorists. At that point, they win!!

    Back to the threats. It's been a long time since I've been in a Civics class, but I seem to recall that an attack on a Nation's Embassy is the same as an attack on that country's sovereign soil. It is not clear that is still the case. Another change by the Anointed One's Administration?? Or more from the "when threatened, retreat" crowd?? It would seem embassies are no longer "sovereign American soil". Do you suppose we should start treating foreign embassies located in the U.S. the same way??

    I suppose it's a good thing that the remnants of Al Qaeda that seem to have survived the anointed One's punishing rhetoric didn't overtly threaten the continental US. Where could we retreat to??

    Nationally, our stock in trade seems to be sanctions (UN sanctions, that is - when China and Russia permit them.) We've been into sanctions for a long (take the sanctions against Cuba that have been in place for over fifty years - and still haven't brought Fidel - and now his brother Raul - or anyone else to their knees).

    We ask the UN (of all people) to "bless" sanctions against those with whom we have issues. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. When they do a lot of the "know nothings" in our society seem to think that ends the problem. Many, if not most of those folks, seem to believe that an announced UN sanction, even when not implemented or enforced (which seems to be the norm), will invariably solve the problem. It won't!

    Actually we see the same thing when the Anointed One reads a speech off his Teleprompters. They usually sound pretty believable. (That's the nature of "plausible lies".) The problem generally is that at that point a lot of folks (way too many) consider the "issue" resolved and the subject closed. How many times have we heard the Anointed One pronounce something as "unacceptable" and then drop the subject. Short answer: Lots of times. And what good has the pronouncement done?? Short answer: None.

    D'ya think??