Courage against carnage in short supply

A familiar schoolyard scene  features a bully who can tell that some grade school hotshot is a paper tiger.

 

Full of hot air.

 

The hotshot tells the bully not to cross the line in the dirt he has just scratched  into the ground with  a stick.

 

The  bully steps over the line.

 

The hotshot responds by drawing another line.

 

Which the bully immediately crosses over.

 

The classmates watch the pitiful scene as it's apparent that the hotshot talks a good game but can't back it up.

 

He's actually a coward who is not prepared to fight.

 

The bully has won without even throwing a punch.

 

Hotshot slinks away.

 

Humiliated.

 

The classmates wonder who is ever going to stand up to the bully.

 

Sound familiar?

 

Bashar al-Assad, the two bit dictator in Syria, has been shooting men, women, and children in his homeland by the thousands for the last two years.

 

A disgusting disregard for human life.

 

President Obama has criticized this behavior.

 

And then done nothing.

 

Some  aid to refugees here and there but as far as the gruesome slaughter?

 

Nothing.

 

Then two weeks ago reports surfaced from British and Israeli intelligence that Assad had used chemical weapons against his own people.

 

Obama was outraged.

 

His outraged mystified me because as bad as chemical weapons are, the child in his mother's arms  is just as dead from the machine gun bullets as he  would be from poison gas.

 

Was he outraged because now more modern tools are used to destroy families?

 

Anyway, after the outrage over the use of chemicals, Obama again did what he always does.

 

Nothing.

 

The classmates, that is,  I mean, the rest of the world, is watching and snickering behind the back of the hotshot.

 

There was a time when the figure  of the bald eagle on the presidential seal was a symbol of brave resolve.

 

When a president drew a line, there were consequences for crossing it.

 

World powers trembled at the "big stick" Teddy Roosevelt wielded.

 

But this president has become an international laughing  stock because his threats are meaningless.

 

Worse than that, he projects false hope to the downtrodden living in bombed out hovels in Syria.

 

America, the last great hope for civilization, is fast becoming irrelevant on the world stage.

 

Yes, our president can travel to Europe and be feted as the first truly progressive in the White House.

 

But while he spreads caviar on fancy crackers in Paris, many wonder if he will ever wake up to realize he is squandering away our historic role as the moral conscience of mankind.

 

Harry Truman made a tough call to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 

But he did it to save the world from heinous acts of violence despite the use of raw power it required.

 

Mr. President, do something.

 

A little boy somewhere in  the darkness in Damascus prays for a hero to stand up  to the bully.

 

Make America heroic again.

 

It is our legacy.

 

God bless America.