While we dither away about GMOs, taxing plastic bags and confronting that latest threat to humanity (phthalates in our plastic bottles), there are people across the ocean (for now) who are trying their best to impose a new Dark Age on humanity. Those people are willing and able to kill and be killed for their cause.

Us? We “arrest” terrorists. I am sure Ahmed Abu Khattala is quaking in his boots over facing the U.S. justice system. The ACLU will defend him pro bono, and no matter the round one outcome, the courts will swallow it up for a decade.

We negotiate with the enemy, and swap five high-level terrorist soldiers for one alleged deserter (if there is a true jaw-dropping moment in this fiasco, that takes the prize, hands down). Now we delude ourselves into thinking this somehow “deters” terrorists.

The U.S. worldview is based on cowardice and pandering.

The president’s foreign policy consists of blaming the previous administration and begging Russia’s Vladimir Putin to rescue us.

Someday, this country might get a real president who will roll up his or her sleeves and proclaim, “We have a problem. Now let’s get to work fixing it.” Someday. Maybe.

Sadly, whether we like it or not, the real world doesn’t work that way. We are fooling no one but ourselves.

Eventually, it will come back to bite us in the rear end. All we can hope for is that it will be a nip and not a chomp.

Andrew Hall, Lewiston