THE METERS ARE RUNNING

Are the strengths of the United States so unassailable that significant features of it can be discarded or degraded without jeopardizing the whole?

This thought occurred to me this day whilst thinking about the national and international news of the last few days.

It is easy for one to get the impression that our leadership is dithering while our enemies are busily going about the business of finally achieving the goals they have sought after for many years, even for many decades.

The open hand remains extended to Iran and Russia and North Korea and Venezuela, and meanwhile the meters continue to run on uranium enrichment; new missile development; new anti-American treaty systems; greater energy dependence; combat operations not going well; impossible expenditures of funds and debt creation; and what increasingly appears to be an inevitable attack by one or more nations on the nuclear doings of Iran, to name just a few ‘meters’.

And all the while our national leadership seems preoccupied with health care revolution; Olympic games; climate change; and warring with cable news programs, to name just a few preoccupations.

Should the informed citizen be alarmed?

Is our Republic strong enough to stand all of this whatever it is?

In all my years, I have never heard of a great power successfully providing for its security by extending the open hand to enemies and asking for nothing in return.

I think it has never been done successfully.
I think it will never be done.

I have the impression that the leaders of the world, both the friendlies and the unfriendlies, are laughing at the leadership of the United States at this time, that the only people who take our President and his policies seriously are the poor fools who voted for him in this country and the citizens of foreign nations who just don’t know any better.

I suggest that the United States can make some mistakes and still be ok.
We are not just a major power.

The United States is a hyper-power, the likes of which the world has never seen, ever.

But there has to be a limit to what damage our own leadership can do to our great strength without making us vulnerable to significant threats.