On a day when a mob attack killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya, Marines were deployed to that country.
Closer to home, announcement was made of deployment of 250 soldiers from a local National Guard to Kuwait, a staging ground between Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, hot spots remain everywhere in the Mideast. The volatility is such that a video on You Tube since June is the first rationalization for the killing of Ambassador Chris Stevens, who facilitated the healthy move toward freedom in Libya in the past year.
Political balance in the Mideast is a delicate, daunting task.
But the strategy has to be based on strength, not misguided statements. The first official Washington response to the cold-blooded murder of an ambassador and three other Americans at an American consulate was to deplore religious injustice, a reference to a video that apparently sparked the attacks.
Of course we deplore religious injustice and stereotypes.
But first reactions are vital when innocent Americans are attacked. President Obama should have instantaneously been deploring the injustice toward our country embodied in these killings and marshaling the world court of opinion against these acts. Especially since the attacks occurred, not coincidentally in our view, on Sept. 11.
He later called the act unjustified, but that and more should have been the first response.
We are sending National Guardsmen from our area into the fringes of a couldron. We have many soldiers from this region already serving on multiple military fronts in the Mideast.
They deserve the full backing of an administration committed to a no-compromise approach toward thugs. They deserve a media engaged in its role of objectively monitoring the administration's response to military situations.
They don't deserve packs of reporters caught on tape conspiring to come up with gotcha questions for Obama's opponent, Mitt Romney, when he dares to question a weak response accurate to an attack on Americans.
