Sectarian violence in the Middle East is about to boil over into anarchy after the Wahabi kingdom of Saudi Arabia executed 47 people in twelve different cities, many by that nation’s favorite modus operandi: decapitation.

Among those executed was popular Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. The 56-year-old cleric’s crime? He was a political activist who demanded voting rights for his Shiite minority within the kingdom. Stuff we in America take for granted, but could cause you to literally lose your head in Saudi Arabia.

Since then the Saudi Arabian embassy in Tehran, Iran, has been torched. And the former Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, has ominously predicted that this single execution will be the downfall of Saudi Arabia’s government.

Now brutality is nothing new with the Saudis. My husband once had a colleague who lived as a young woman with her parents in Saudi Arabia, as her father was employed there. One day she went to a market and suddenly found herself swept up in a crowd that was surging towards the market square. She found it was to witness public executions, mandatory in the kingdom. Horrified, she somehow managed to break free from the crowd to flee for home.

What is President Obama’s reaction to the execution of Nimr al-Nimr — Obama, the great sympathizer of Muslim causes? Well, his State Department called upon Saudi Arabia to “respect and protect human rights,” and to permit “peaceful expression of dissent.”

Does anyone think the Saudis will heed those weak-kneed pleas? Anyone, anyone? Bueller, Bueller?

No, what El Presidente has on his plate for Monday are executive orders on controlling guns in America. Your guns. My guns. The means of separation between life and death should a San Bernardino erupt in your city. Or mine. Never mind that his beloved “assault weapons” ban and gun-free zones wouldn’t have made a lick of difference in preventing attacks. Never mind that the vaunted “no fly lists” are fraught with error, and denying those who may be on them the right to purchase a gun may be denying constitutional rights without due process. No, Obama wants to clamp down on our guns. And he plans to do so while giving Congressional Republicans the middle finger by shutting them out of any discussion.

Meanwhile the Middle East is on fire because Don Quixote Obama prefers to joust at the windmills of gun ownership rather than to secure that region. He’s left it weak and rudderless by withdrawing troops.

I’ve heard various commentators say that Obama was responding to a war-weary nation by pulling out troops in Iraq, and it was a promise he kept. So what exactly is a President supposed to be — a genie in a bottle? Or is he supposed to lead, sometimes by making the tough decisions (a là President Truman and Hiroshima)?

Obama promised America others things too that didn’t pan out. Remember “If you like your insurance you can keep your insurance?” Why is this different?

This has nothing to do with promises kept. This has to do with Obama’s world view and ideology: America is no better than any other nation. We have no right to be the Big Dog on the block. We are a nation that has committed crimes in our past (name me a nation that has not), and we don’t deserve to be Number One, but just one number among many nations.

So we fight wars according to Rules of Engagement written up by JAG attorneys in Washington. Our pilots refrain from dropping bombs on trucks laden with fuel bound for ISIS because the driver might be a civilian. They’re restricted to making half-assed sorties which accomplish little, and the administration crows about their successes. This administration fights to make a good show, but it doesn’t fight to win.

My father is a 91-year-old World War II veteran, and he has told me many times that whether we like it or not, the U.S. is the main superpower in the world. When we don’t act like a superpower, he says, the world goes to hell, as indeed we see now in the Middle East. The war my dad fought was a war the U.S. fought to win, even though there was no timetable and often no end in sight. And yes, as a member of a B-17 bomber crew that flew over Europe, I’m sure he participated in bombing factories and oil refineries that were loaded with civilians.

But Obama has better things to do. Like getting back to work on Monday morning to make sure that we law-abiding Americans have our rights as gun owners further chipped away.