If you walk into my bedroom, your eyes will most likely gravitate immediately to the vertically hung 6-foot-by-4-foot 48-star American flag that serves as the headboard to my bed. There are only 48 stars to honor the sacrifices Americans made during World War II. The flag also nicely complements the two litho prints that frame it, one of a World War II Corsair about to land on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific, and one of a Corsair flying over some 1940s kids on their bikes in Newport Beach.
If you are a flag buff or served in any official capacity with the flag, especially in the military, you will immediately notice that it is hung incorrectly with the field of stars on your right and not on your left. The reason this flag hangs in this manner is because if you were looking down on a flag-draped coffin from the foot of the coffin, this is how the flag would appear to you. This is to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice to provide me with the freedoms that I enjoy each and every day in this country, including the freedom to live free of oppression and the freedom to speak my mind as I tend to do in these blog posts.
I am writing about this incorrectly hung flag because on the very same morning last week during which I published a blog post calling for the people and governments of the world to unite against those who want to deny us the right to these freedoms and our right to even exist, I also read an article about a French man named Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and French woman named Jessica Schneider.
I never met Jean-Baptiste Salvaing or Jessica Schneider, but I have a feeling we most likely shared at least a few common traits, interests, or beliefs. And while we might not have agreed on everything, we probably would have, at the very least, recognized each other’s right to exist. But sadly, out of the three of us, I am now the only one that does – exist that is.
One evening just last week Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and Jessica Schneider were doing what billions of us across the world do many nights – they were sitting in their home, living their lives, and I am sure like most of us, enjoying life. Then, out of nowhere, their house was broken into and they were savagely murdered. They were not murdered in a robbery, in a crime of passion, or due to some personal vendetta harbored by their murderer.
Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and Jessica Schneider were murdered solely because they were not practicing the beliefs that have been decreed for the entire world to follow by the Islamic State. A man who I will not name because I believe the names of murders should be kept out of the press chose the couple at random. He felt he had been ordered by ISIS to kill and that is what he went out and did.
And while ISIS is most definitely to blame, and the person who committed this horrible act is to blame, I would like to say unequivocally that the French government is also to blame. The murderer was convicted and jailed in 2013 for recruiting jihadists to fight in Syria, and while he was being monitored, the authorities overseeing his case had not seen anything to feel he was a threat. Wow, that sure sounds familiar doesn’t it? Seems like that is the reoccurring theme with the people that commit these acts, isn’t it? They were questioned or served their time and didn’t seem like a threat according to the people in charge.
It was nice that France’s president, who, unlike ours would have done in this situation, immediately recognized this as an act of terror. France’s president then also ordered that the flags across the nation be flown at half-staff to mourn the couple that had been murdered.
And this is why I started out by telling you about my flag that is hung incorrectly according to official standards. See, when I was reading this article about Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and Jennifer Schneider, I made a decision. I decided that if I were to be killed in a terror attack here in America and either our current inept president or a future inept president called for flags across the nation to be flown at half-staff, I would officially like to request, here and now, that his or her order not be carried out. I do not want to see the American flag flown at half-staff to mourn my death from a terror attack on American soil. I want each and every one of you in America to run Old Glory straight up to the top of that flagpole, but first, I want you to hang her upside down. Honor me, friends, by flying America’s flag improperly, just like the one I sleep under. And just like the one I sleep under, I want your improperly hung flags to symbolize something.
I want those upside down flags to symbolize the fact that I am dead because America is in distress and was unable to protect my life from a radical extremist that was hell-bent on my and America’s destruction. I want those upside down flags to symbolize how preventable my death was, but that it was not prevented due to our nation’s inability to properly wage war, her inability to not let political correctness stand in the way of the loss of life of its citizens and her inability to do the right thing when I was counting on her.
It is time for the nations of the world to stop treating jihadists like criminals and treat them like combatants – like soldiers on the field of battle who are murdering unarmed civilians. It is time to treat them like war criminals, not like stupid kids that robbed a liquor store. The man who killed Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and Jennifer Schneider should never have been on the streets of France after having been duly convicted of recruiting jihadists, and every single person in France should be mad as hell that he was, just like every person here in America should be mad as hell when someone who was obviously on the radar of the FBI or CIA commits an act of terror because they were not treated accordingly and kept from committing that act of terror.
The time has come for us to hold the governments of the world, especially our own, accountable for the inaction that is leading to the deaths of their citizens.
Photo via Pixabay
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