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Leave fight against ISIS to professionals

4 min read
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While the rest of us were settling in with eggnog, “Silent Night” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” when Christmas Eve rolled around last month, Florida’s U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio was buying a gun.

The Republican presidential candidate pointed this out on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, most likely in an effort to fortify his Second Amendment bonafides, and also to show off a little hairy-chested machismo, particularly in light of the fact that fashionable high-heeled boots he had been sporting out on the campaign trail recently made him the object of jibes by his opponents. In a crowded field where every candidate wants GOP voters to believe they mix concrete nails with their breakfast cereal and are as hardened as a roomful of drill sergeants, being seen as something of a dandy could well be the kiss of death.

Setting aside whether purchasing weaponry best exemplifies the spirit of Christmas, Rubio said he needed to have the gun in order to protect his family from Islamic State militants.

“I have a right to protect my family if someone were to come after us,” he said. “In fact, if ISIS were to visit us or our communities at any moment, the last line of defense between ISIS and my family is the ability I have to protect my family from them …”

Rubio, of course, has a right to purchase a gun for any reason he conjures. But if he truly believes his gun could end up being all that prevents hordes of crazed jihadists from raising the ISIS flag over the U.S. Capitol, then we really have to wonder something: Why are we pouring so much money into the Pentagon in the first place?

The country’s defense budget will be $607 billion this year, and $610 billion in 2017. Even as infrastructure and education go wanting, the Pentagon often gets more money than it requests from lawmakers who are eager to have bases and defense-industry projects on their home turf. And, yes, many legislators fear being tagged as weak on defense, so the spending spree continues unabated.

And consider this: We spend more on defense than the next seven nations combined. You would have to put together the military budgets of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, Britain and Germany in order to equal the annual outlay to the Pentagon.

Yet, after all of that spending, after all the aircraft carriers, armored vehicles, fighter jets, drones, precision-guided bombs, and on and on, Rubio believes ISIS fighters could evade all of that and come trampling over his shrubs, his firearm “the last line of defense”?

Oh boy.

President Obama offered a somewhat more realistic assessment on the threat posed by ISIS in last week’s State of the Union address. He pointed out that “over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands. …They do not threaten our national existence.”

Obama also noted the skill of the country’s troops, describing them as “the finest fighting force in the history of the world. No nation dares attack us or our allies because they know that’s the path to ruin.”

As always, being vigilant about potential terrorist threats is wise.

Ferreting them out is a task best left to those charged with gathering intelligence and enforcing our laws. But to believe that ISIS will be invading our neighborhoods like a swarm of zombies in “The Night of the Living Dead” is to indulge in paranoid fantasy worthy of Hollywood.

Perhaps Rubio should calm down and heed the words of President George W. Bush in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. In an address to Congress, Bush gave the following advice to a rattled nation: “I ask you to live your lives …”

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