My World War II vets in my former pastorate are all gone. They would spit venom at the idea of being aggressors. America defends the little guys, they believed. They beat Hitler and Japan to say, “Stop it. Leave the world alone.” And they came home and raised families, earned a living and served their communities.

This is what I am sure they would say: “Leave Greenland alone. You don’t treat friends like a hostile takeover.” They would have said, “No. Leave them alone. Finish the ballroom. Get inflation under control. Fix the highways and take care of the poor right here. Anything but bullying a friend.”

Respect is a two way street. People may be afraid of America’s military might, but fear isn’t respect. Dress it up anyway you like, this is dead wrong.

“Don’t tread on me.” I see that a lot, on bumper stickers and social media, and mostly pickup trucks. It has the Gadsden flag with a coiled up snake.

I had a close encounter of the scariest kind with a Western Diamondback rattlesnake while working outdoors in Colorado during college. It was six feet long, about ten feet away and rattling warning. I stood perfectly still for what felt like an hour. It was probably a minute. Once the snake perceived that I had not interest in bothering her, she went about her business. That’s respect. And I felt no desire to attack her.

Aggression would be a snake that decided, “ I think I’ll bite him anyway, just because I can.” Animals attack and kill of course, but it’s about eating, surviving, protecting the young. They aren’t threatening just for the rush of hurting others like people.

America is on the wrong track. And it’s easy to just say, “Well, we’ve done it before.” Yes, we have, but the troops who did the fighting and dying didn’t decide that. Politicians and oligarchs drive the bus, always have, but sometimes when the bus is on the edge of a cliff, you do what you can. Stealing is stealing. Disrespect is disrespect. Aggression is aggression. You don’t turn it into something noble by calling it beautiful . In the end, it’s simply Darwinian survival of the richest.

But it’s always a choice. Somebody escalates or lies about it or makes a choice to do it in spite of all the good advice in the world. War is folly. I learned that from that group of men to whom I was pastor for many, many years. I heard terrible stories of what they went through—Omaha beach, Bastogne, Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Pearl Harbor, and others from Korea and Vietnam. Not one ever said they yearned to do it again. More than one shed tears for friends they saw killed or suffering they witnessed. But when leaders started rattling sabres, they would shake their heads. They knew what it meant.

Maybe it’s just another bluff, a “negotiation” trick to force our friends to give us what “we” (?) want. But it is the disrespect of the bully, made of blowhard rhetoric and veiled threats. Maybe, most likely, the worst won’t happen. But the damage is already done. And power is an intoxicating brew.

The message? “We’re not who you thought we are. You can’t trust us anymore to come to your aid when you’re in trouble, unless we get something for it. We don’t respect you, and we don’t care if you respect us or sent soldiers to die with us after 9/11 or anything else. We’re just another foot on the throat of anyone who gets in our way, like Russia, China or Somali pirates.”

That’s a lot of things. But it’s not moral principle or a reputation worth having. And if I heard the ever pugnacious and caustic Mr. Miller correctly, we Americans don’t care about such things anymore.

Well, my WW II vets did. And I still do. And when a rattler sounds a warning, you have decide the wisest course of action. You don’t do it just because nobody can stop you. That’s what we used to think the bad guys did.