After JFK was shot the entire military was on high alert. This was the Cold War, and with the President in distress, within minutes it could turn Hot.
Earlier, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had put it starkly – “We will bury you.”
Was this it? Was this the first shot?
He had 10,000 nuclear missiles to back him up. So did we. It was close enough during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It didn’t happen then. But now... our leader incapacitated?
This would be the perfect time for the two Communist behemoths, the Soviet Union and China, to team up and go in for the kill.
Head for the bomb shelters…run for the hills…doomsday is near…that’s what people were thinking in America Nov. 22, 1963 and thereabouts. Read this, “The Days of the Bitter End.”
Now here we are, Oct. 2020. Everything is different, and on the grand scale, we are at peace…well, we are not at war.
(Unless, of course, you count the scolds at our heels, like yuckster Chris Rock who opened his SNL routine addressing our President’s condition with the crack, “My heart goes out to Covid.” The audience of fellow no-class Liberal Americans laughed and cheered. Hard to believe? Believe. It’s like I say, people who got bias don’t know they got it.)
Except for the cleaning up, and clearing out, from the mess left behind by his predecessors, President Trump has gotten us into no quagmires.
Do we salute him for this?
The usual scolds are up and about blaming him for catching the Covid-19, with no thought to thank him for keeping the world steady-as-she-goes while he recuperates.
What we are witnessing is Trump’s genius at foreign relations.
Was he right all along? Yes.
Was he right to tease Kim Jong Un out of his shell in order to tame him? The scolds say he is wrong to “cozy up to dictators.”
Too bad. But dictators are the way of the world. Trump does not choose them.
So are we in a shooting war with North Vietnam?
No. Right? Good. Thank you. Thought you’d agree.
Are we in a Cold War with Russia?
No, though if relations are tense, it’s because the Democrats, the scolds, want it so. They badger President Trump about being too cozy with Putin.
Is this wrong…a bad approach…considering that there are still thousands of nuclear missiles pointed them to us, us to them. One wrong move could be curtains.
Are we in a shooting war with Russia?
If the answer is no…and that is the right answer, of course…then repeat after me, Trump is right and the scolds are wrong.
Better to be on the good side of Putin than to tempt him, and Trump knows this. He knows the mind of a Strongman.
Trump knows how and when to play good cop/bad cop. The scolds are too ignorant to understand this.
Putin has no plans to bury us. He’s happy enough being master over his corner of the world.
He likes his power and his fame. For him it’s Hollywood and the life of a Studio Mogul. He does not need the United States to consolidate his stardom.
Putin is no monster, the likes of those who came before him. Can he be ruthless? Certainly. It’s the way of empires and emperors. Read Machiavelli.
Trump chose harmony, even if it meant buttering-up the undeserving…and it’s been working.
Are we at war with the Arab world, or even the Muslim world? Relations have seldom been better, thanks to the wisdom of President Trump.
The scolds…how they howled when Trump moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, and then again after he cut the “Palestinian Cause” down to size.
The Arab Street will erupt, they predicted. The opposite happened, as more and more Sunni nations are falling in behind the UAE to make peace with Israel.
President Trump deserves to rest easy during his convalescence. He has earned our gratitude, but the scolds will continue to walk among us.
That too is the way of the world.
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.
He wrote the worldwide book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal,” the authoritative newsroom epic, “The Bathsheba Deadline,” followed by his coming-of-age classics, “The Girls of Cincinnati,” and, the Holocaust-to-Montreal memoir, “Escape from Mount Moriah.” For that and his 1960s epic “The Days of the Bitter End,” contemporaries have hailed him “The last Hemingway, a writer without peer, and the conscience of us all.” Website: www.jackengelhard.com