He sat on the other side of the bookshelf. He had red hair and shining eyes. He was fit and tall and walked with confidence and certainty as he came and went.
There was a poster on the wall above his desk. It had an F-16 fighter in some kind of banking turn or attack dive or maybe a rocket-like climb with afterburners blazing. I can’t remember exactly as it was a long time ago. But I do recall this: across the top the poster read, Peace Through Superior Firepower.
It was the 80s. On movie screens, in the press, in Washington, D.C., in the jungles of Central America, everywhere there was evidence of the return of America. The Gipper fixed the malaise, didn’t he? And Rambo. And Oliver North. They gave us back our confidence, our resolve, our superior firepower.
And as it was then; so it is today in Syria. Cruise missiles, task groups anchored in the Mediterranean, surgical strikes. Certainly these are tools that we must bring to bear in the interest of peace. You know, like the peace of Iraq, like the peace of Afghanistan. Peace Through Superior Firepower.