Readers could be reminded of the phrase delivered by Paul Harvey when considering the kidnapping and threats of sale into slavery of 276 Nigerian girls: “It is not one world.”

Mark Steyn is reminded of something else:

It is hard not to have total contempt for a political culture that thinks the picture at right is a useful contribution to rescuing 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by jihadist savages in Nigeria. Yet some pajama boy at the White House evidently felt getting the First Lady to pose with this week’s Hashtag of Western Impotence would reflect well upon the Administration. The horrible thing is they may be right: Michelle showed she cared – on social media! – and that’s all that matters, isn’t it?

At right of the lead paragraph is this photo:

Steyn resumes:

Just as the last floppo hashtag, #WeStandWithUkraine, didn’t actually involve standing with Ukraine, so #BringBackOurGirls doesn’t require bringing back our girls. There are only a half-dozen special forces around the planet capable of doing that without getting most or all of the hostages killed: the British, the French, the Americans, Israelis, Germans, Aussies, maybe a couple of others. So, unless something of that nature is being lined up, those schoolgirls are headed into slavery, and the wretched pleading passivity of Mrs Obama’s hashtag is just a form of moral preening. …

There’s something slightly weird about taking a hashtag – which on the Internet at least has a functional purpose – and getting a big black felt marker and writing it on a piece of cardboard and holding it up, as if somehow the comforting props of social media can be extended beyond the computer and out into the real world. Maybe the talismanic hashtag never required a computer in the first place. Maybe way back during the Don Pacifico showdown all Lord Palmerston had to do was tell the Greeks #BringBackOurJew.

As [blogger Daniel] Payne notes, these days progressive “action” just requires “calling on government” to act. But it’s sobering to reflect that the urge to call on someone else to do something is now so reflexive and ingrained that even “the government” – or in this case the wife of “the government” – is now calling on someone else to do something.

Boko Haram, the girls’ kidnappers, don’t strike me as social media types. As I wrote last year:

The other day, members of Boko Haram, a group of (surprise!) Muslim “extremists,” broke into an agricultural college in Nigeria and killed some four dozen students. The dead were themselves mainly Muslim, but had made the fatal mistake of attending a non-Islamic school. “Boko Haram” means more or less “Learning is sinful,” this particular wing of the jihad reveling more than most in the moronic myopia of Islamic imperialism.

Does anyone seriously believe #BringBackOurGirls will actually compel Boko Haram into releasing the girls? Does anyone seriously believe the girls will be released through negotiation? Does anyone seriously believe the Nigerian kidnappers will realize the error of their ways through persistent moral suasion? To quote Steven Tyler, dream on.

George Will added his contempt on Fox News Sunday, as noted by The Daily Caller:

Host Chris Wallace asked Will whether the “Bring Back Our Girls” hashtag, which has been tweeted out over two million times — including by First Lady Michelle Obama — is effective.

“Do you think that this is significant and helpful and can make progress?” he asked. “Or do you think it’s really about helping the people that tweet the hashtag feel better about themselves?”

“Exactly that,” Will responded unreservedly. “It’s an exercise in self-esteem. I don’t know how adults stand there, facing a camera, and say, ‘Bring back our girls.’ Are these barbarians in the wilds of Nigeria supposed to check their Twitter accounts and say ‘Uh-oh, Michelle Obama is very cross with us, we better change our behavior.’”

“Power is the ability to achieve intended effects,” he explained. “And this is not intended to have any effect on the real world. It’s a little bit like environmentalism has become. The incandescent lightbulb becomes the enemy. It has NO effect whatever on the planet, but it makes people feel good about themselves.”

Recall during the 2008 presidential campaign that Barack Obama basically said that if people like us, instead of being afraid of us as was the case in the George W. Bush administration, things will be so much better around the world? Clearly Boko Haram isn’t afraid of the U.S. Nor is Vladimir Putin.

This is where libertarianism and pacifism tends to fall down. Not everyone on this planet has the moral values Americans have. Some people really do believe women, even girls, are nothing but cattle. It is one thing to be judicious in deciding where the U.S. — still the last best hope of democracy — will exert its military might. It is another to refuse to use it at all, believing that every problem that doesn’t occur within our borders is someone else’s concern.

Steyn is absolutely right when he points out that only a few countries can free the girls without getting many of them, or many of themselves, killed in the process. That doesn’t mean if an American Special Forces operation took place, some Americans, and some hostages, might not get killed. That is the price that gets paid when the military gets involved. Economic sanctions ultimately aren’t as effective as guns and bombs, or at least the credible threat of guns and bombs.  To expect otherwise is to ignore the lessons of human history, like it or not.

Try this thought exercise: Instead of Nigeria, what if this happened in this country, and what if one of the kidnapped girls was your daughter? Would you Tweet #BringBackOurGirls? Assuming you don’t have enough wealth to hire The Expendables or someone on Mercenary.com, wouldn’t you expect this country to move heaven and earth to rescue your daughter?