Responding in the Middle East | Myrtle Beach Sun News

Many Americans aren’t too happy about the Obama administration’s response to the latest man-made disasters in the Middle East. In fact, we’re still waiting for a meaningful response.

President Obama can be forgiven. After all, he had money to raise and votes to win, so despite the fact that our ambassador’s, his staff, and a couple of SEALs’ bodies weren’t yet cold, it was off to Las Vegas for the prez. Besides, based on Bob Woodward’s new book, we come to learn President Obama doesn’t like to be bothered with the pesky details of the job.

Likewise, we can forgive Hillary Clinton, too. After her pathetic condemnation of an obscure Internet filmmaker, and the needless spending of thousands of taxpayer dollars doing the same, she’s going to need a wrist brace for all that pain she’s inflicted on herself. Frankly, we’re better off she didn’t promise another “strong response,” as that response would have to wait behind the strong responses she promised when North Korea fired that missile over Japan, and later sank the South Korean vessel.

The bright light at the end of the tunnel is that in watching Obama and Clinton operate, we now know the consequences of putting people in positions for which they are not qualified. The former had no real life training in anything, both are lawyers by training, and neither was in the Senate long enough to find the employee restrooms. It was Larry Kersten who defined incompetence as follows: “When you earnestly believe you can compensate for a lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there’s no end to what you can’t do.”

So, what was a proper response to the Muslim terrorists in the Middle East? First, you clue them in that there is no God who condones the killing of innocent and defenseless men, women and children, including other Muslims for a cause.

Furthermore, you advise the Cro-Magnon throwbacks that if they want to eventually graduate into a class C civilization, they have to embrace two ideas which are core principles of civilized people: religious tolerance and freedom of speech. If the religious zealots in the Middle East engage in violent protest over every item with offensive content that they find on the Internet, they’ll never stop protesting and killing.

Third, until our embassies are rebuilt, the security of our diplomats and their staff is guaranteed, and the families of the slain victims compensated, your foreign aid check is “in the mail.” Additionally, justice to the killers will be meted out without reservation, and no matter how long it takes.

Finally, we need to tell the so-called nonviolent Muslims who don’t buy off on the wingnut interpretation of the Quran that it is time they get violent and purge the extremists from their midst. Until the people of the Middle East embrace religious tolerance and freedom of speech, they’ll be at war forever with their fellows who respect neither.

The writer lives in Myrtle Beach.