History is filled with examples of the meek inheriting a 3 x 6 foot hole in the ground. When they haven't been left unburied for the dogs and ravens.

How many "non-aggression treaties" have been ground under the hooves of horses, chariot wheels or tank treads? How many civilized people have appealed to brutes, thinking they can be dealt with like civilized people, only to find themselves in chains?

We forget all these historical examples, even those that happened in our own time. I remember the triumph of our "deal" with North Vietnam. But as soon as they realized we were no longer going to oppose them, they devoured the South while the U.S. looked the other way.

In Pakistan and elsewhere, the radical Islamists have been commanded by God to obliterate everything that is not radical Islam. There is no middle ground. To such people, treaties are just different kinds of weapons, used to delay useful idiots from taking any action that might actually work.

Have you noticed how a lot of hostile nations are testing their limits right now? North Korea, Iran, Russia, China? Also the terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and elsewhere?

A car mechanic put it crudely to me, using what is apparently a sports term: "A lot of guys out there are looking at the U.S. now and smelling pussy."

I'm having a hard time thinking of a better way to put it.

And now, a little Kipling to raise the cultural level back up:

The Islanders:

Ancient, effortless, ordered, cycle on cycle set,
Life so long untroubled, that ye who inherit forget
It was not made with the mountains, it is not one with the deep.
Men, not gods, devised it. Men, not gods, must keep.