Trey Smith
Most of my wife's family and many of her childhood friends live in Arkansas. While there are some liberals in that area, the vast majority of her family/childhood friends are your average redneck, conservative, bible thumping, fundamentalist Christians who believe, among other things, that Barack Obama is a foreign-born Muslim Socialist! Needless to say, they were crushed by this week's presidential result.
One of the memes being discussed by these folks on Facebook is that the US is a ready target for attack by no-good terrorists because...wait for the drum roll...Obama has made our nation appear weak to the world.
What? Are these people certifiably insane?
The US regularly kills people in a widening number of Muslim countries through the use of drone warfare. We have ongoing operations in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. We're still fighting a "war" in Afghanistan and US troops are still stationed in Iraq. And we, in conjunction with Israel, are rattling our sabers at Iran.
How on earth could anyone equate all these activities with a "weak" appearance?
I pondered on this question for a while and then I realized the answer. In our reality-television world, a lot of people don't consider something to be real unless they can watch it on TV! Our ubiquitous drone program -- by its very nature -- is secretive. Unless Wikileaks exposes it, drone attacks only are announced --- WHEN they are announced at all -- in text or the spoken word (i.e., no photos or video).
In other words, since these yahoos are not given the chance of watching an unmanned drone blow some poor Muslim family to smithereens, they don't believe we're really actually killing people. I mean, a "strong" nation kills innocents and parades their heads around on sticks!! Since we don't show heads on sticks, we must be weak.
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