"You have no idea how much it contributes to the general politeness and pleasantness of diplomacy when you have a little quiet armed force in the background.” George F. Kennan, American diplomat and advisor
July 16, 2014
By: Linda Case Gibbons
Benjamin Franklin was good at it. John Adams was not.
Franklin had a flair for diplomacy and secured support from the French for America’s Revolution.
Adams tried, but the seriousness of his nature and the urgency of his words just served to alienate him from the French people and their king.
But it was this passion, this love of country that made the American people choose Adams to be their president.
They knew him to be a man of character.
They knew that the 35-year-old Adams had chosen the unpopular task of representing the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre because he believed the men were entitled to a fair trial.
If convicted, they faced the death penalty and no other lawyer in Boston was willing to represent them, except John Adams.
"Facts are stubborn things,” he said, because, indeed, the facts bore out that the British soldiers were innocent of the charges brought against them, even though the colonists would have preferred a different outcome.
Adams risked everything. He lost clients, he endured threats and criticism. He placed his own life and that of his wife and young children in danger. But in the end the people knew this was an honorable man.
They knew he was a man who fought for independence when it was time, who protested at a critical moment at the Continental Congress, "It is one thing to turn the other cheek, but to lay down on the ground like a snake and crawl toward the seat of power in abject surrender is quite another thing and I have no stomach for it.”
It was time for independence from England.
The qualities Adams possessed were the ones shared by the men who stepped forward, to serve in the Continental Congress, the men who had the guts to make the real "Hard Choices.”
It was about leadership. It was about courage and loyalty. It was about love of country.
When fifty-some odd men travelled far from their homes to come to Philadelphia in 1774, they left families and their livelihoods behind. Travel was difficult and smallpox was rampant in the country.
When they sat in a sweltering room in Independence Hall in the summer of 1775 and debated what to do next, they knew full well that their very lives were at stake for rebelling against the king of England.
But they rebelled anyway. To a man.
By the time the First Continental Congress convened, tea had been dumped into Boston Harbor, the king and his Parliament had closed the port of Boston, shut down Boston’s commerce and ended its self-government with imposition of the Intolerable Acts and martial law.
In response the thirteen colonies rallied together and demanded the acts be revoked or risk the boycott of British goods. But by the time the Second Continental Congress convened in 1775, the revolutionary war had already begun.
Despite their direct appeal to the king for peaceful resolution, the king declared the colonies to be in a state of rebellion and set Hessian mercenaries among them to regain control.
And he made it clear: Their acts of rebellion would result in death by hanging.
Leadership. Either you have it, or you don’t.
Today America is once again threatened by Intolerable Acts and despotic leadership.
While the colonists were insulted and incensed by taxation without their input, Americans see the recurrence of intolerable acts from their government.
Their borders flung wide open, without their approval.
Illegal immigrants transported secretly across their country and settled into their states, without their approval.
They see intrusion of their lives by various arms of the government, monitoring their most personal information, targeting their movements, censoring their speech and taxing everything in their daily lives.
Without their approval.
And they see with dismay the dissolution of the country that John Adams and the Founding Fathers fought to create.
They see elected representatives characterizing their country as unremarkable, as unworthy or unwilling to act or comment on world events.
Staunch allies of their country are neglected and criticized for defending themselves, exhibiting a remarkable lack of foreign policy expertise by those elected officials.
Men whose character over time has proven to be self-serving and questionable. Men who will risk nothing if it loses votes.
No longer is it about the content of a man’s character when he leads, but about the "optics” of his comments.
So Americans, and talk show hosts, and politicians in both parties ask: Why? Why does he do this? Why did he do that? Why?
It’s simply about an overabundance of optics and an under supply of character.
It was an "act of terror” and an "act of war.” That’s what top Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Armed Services Committee said about the Malaysian Airlines passenger plane shot down over Ukraine last week.
But our president didn’t seem to think so.
Appearing at a transportation infrastructure event in Delaware, he devoted less than a minute of his 16-minute speech to the 295 people killed in the Malaysian Airlines crash, then continued with the rest of an address which was peppered with lighthearted jokes.
It was reminiscent of his 2010 "shout out” to "Dr. Joe Medicine Crow” the day of the shooting at Fort Hood. He was three minutes into his speech before he mentioned the 13 people killed and more than 30 injured by a Muslim terrorist at an Army base in our country.
And then, too, his remarks then were curiously lighthearted.
"It looks like it may be a terrible tragedy,” the president said of the recent 2014 air disaster, before declaring "it is wonderful to be back in Delaware.”
That same night he continued with his planned schedule to attend two fundraisers in New York, his fifth fundraising trip to New York in two months, raising $1 million dollars for the Democratic
Party and costing taxpayers millions by his visit to Manhattan.
It was reminiscent of his fundraising trip to Las Vegas after the attack in Benghazi.
It has become so bad, so bizarre that this week a Democratic supporter defended the president. He asked "what do you expect the president to do? Sit in the Situation Room when he can’t do anything?" --- about Iran, Israel, Putin, planes shot out of the air, the borders, Benghazi?
"What do you want him to do?” he asked.
Stay home. Do his job. Be a leader, we answered. But they insisted it was only an "optics” problem.
But perhaps we are holding the bar too high. Sure, the borders may be a mess, they may be unguarded, wide open, but heck, there is a positive side.
Why just this week a "gang” of 67 illegal Giant African Snails were prevented from sneaking into the U.S. in Los Angeles across the U.S. border by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The CBP’s mission is stated as the "management, control and protection of our nation’s borders,” and "keeping terrorists and terrorist weapons out of the country while enforcing hundreds of U.S. laws.”
Iran may be planning to wreck destruction on America. Putin and Muslim terrorists may have an eye on world domination. Israel may be in danger of annihilation. Our economy has tanked, but at least Obama has made sure we need not fear Giant African Snails.
At last report, U.S. Customs and Border Protection indicated the snails are in a detention center for final disposition.
Hold the line, America.