Getting Buzzed, and Not in the Good Way

A couple days back, a US plane -- a spy plane, I believe the news accounts said (if we can ever believe the media to get anything right at all anymore, even bland facts) -- was buzzed by a Chinese jet or two out in international waters.

Naturally, the US plane did nothing except escape, and tomorrow or the day after, we will all have forgotten the incident, if we even knew it had happened.

Sadly, the same thing has happened when Russian planes buzzed our own planes, and buzzed our Navy vessels.  This is going to continue, and more countries, including Iran and its contemptible leadership, are going to keep on doing that.  Iran pulled one of those little stunts just yesterday.

I'm sorry, but I'm buzzed out.

Now, I suppose that there is a thin argument to be made as far as what the risks are when you send a spy plane over a sovereign nation's territory and, say, get it buzzed on the way back.  I suppose that should be considered.

But as far as having our planes and ships buzzed while out in international waters, I've had it.  I am an American, and after having bailed out goodly parts of the free part of the globe in two world wars and in Korea, and having been a force for good and freedom for 200 years, the United States of America deserves the respect of the world.

And we need to show who we are.

I would like to ask the president to make a statement, an explicit statement, to the rest of the world.  We will no longer tolerate the acts of sniveling tyrants against the USA, and buzzing our planes and ships will be regarded as aggressive acts.  We should say in public that if we are buzzed, the offending planes will be obliterated.

Fair warning.  We will not take such offense from Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, whoever.  Buzzing is an affront to the role that the USA has proudly taken for the last century, without coveting the land of other sovereign nations.  We will not tolerate it.

Someone will push the challenge line, and we will act accordingly.  It will be the last time we get buzzed.  And it will show that the USA gives a new meaning to "red line", at least this administration does.

America needs a bit more of that.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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