Hey! Some Respect Please!

 

 

"I get no respect. The way my luck is running, if I was a politician I would be honest"

 

Rodney Dangerfield

 

 

 

As much as I miss Ronald Wilson Reagan, I am happy he is not with us right now to see the demise in our world standing. President Reagan had "street cred" with the world. Whether is was real or bluster, the world knew with the "Gipper" behind the wheel, you better not mess with the US of A.

 

Flash forward to today. We are in the second term or the finger wagging, letter writing era. If you do something wrong, we are going to get really, really mad, and we might not talk to you for awhile. Okay - we are not that mad, as we will continue to send you foreign aid, paid for by money we don't have. Are you burning our flag? It is okay, it is just a piece of cloth. Here is another check, and there will be more coming.

 

Right now we have a little "punk kid" telling us he is going to nuke us. Really? And what was our response? Nada, nothing. President Reagan would have told this kid something like this, "Look kid, I know your country looks very dark at night. If you launch anything at anyone, I will make your county glow (in a bad way) for decades". And that would have been the end of the bluster because he knew Reagan would have done it.

 

In the 80's when Libya was feeling it's oats and challenged our President not to cross the "line of death", what did the "Gipper" do? Crossed the line with guns blazing from our F-14 fighters, showing Libya just a small measure of America's air power. What did we hear from Libya after the attack? Not much.

 

Now our current "finger wagging" President is in the Middle East trying to get the stalled "peace" talks going again. How much respect does Hamas have for our leader? While in the West Bank, Hamas decides to launch some missiles at Israel. No respect what-so-ever. What the President should tell Hamas is this - one more missile, no matter the size, and not another dime in aid. Period. End of story.

 

Last summer the President told us if Syria uses chemical weapons, it will be crossing a "red line" (I think that means something in politico jargon). The week we find out Assad has probably has used not only cluster bombs, but also some kind of chemical agent on his own people. It is bad enough we stood by and watched 70,000 Syrians get slaughtered, but now this? Our current response? "We are looking into the use of chemical weapons. If it is true, it might be a game changer". If you listen closely, you can hear Assad shakin' in his boots.

 

To garner respect on the world stage, you don't need to be a "bad ass". Many years ago, the singer Rick Nelson was asked why he took so many self defense classes. His response was he wanted to be known as a "nice guy that can be tough". That is the was we were known under President Reagan. Now, similar to how we were thought of prior to World War II, we are just a paper tiger.