Locked and loaded Trump puts our enemies on notice

Thank John Wayne.

Or blame him, depending on your point of view.

If the late Hollywood actor, a hero to the military, had read his lines correctly in the 1949 World War II movie “The Sands of Iwo Jima,” we would not be on the verge of possibly bombing Syria again.

When urging his fellow Marines to prepare for bloody combat on the key Japanese-held island of Iwo Jima, Wayne, as battle-hardened Sgt. John Stryker, was supposed to tell his squad to “load and lock.”

That’s what the original movie script called for.

With that order his men were to load their Garand M-1 semi-automatic rifles with clips holding eight rounds and lock them down, only to unlock them when they were prepared to fire. The M-1 was the standard weapon of U.S. combat infantryman in World War II and Korea. Any soldier who fired one knew you had to load it before you locked it. If you didn’t do it right, you risked losing your right thumb or shooting your buddy.

But instead of saying “load and lock,” Wayne, either out of confusion or creativity, told his men, “Lock and load, boys, lock and load.”

“Lock and load” sounded much stronger than “load and lock.” And it stuck.

The phrase became a common reference for an impending violent incident. It meant that you were prepared to fight. This came about even as Wayne, the embodiment of the rugged American fighting man — in the movies, anyway — never saw combat outside of films and never even served in the military, having successfully dodged the draft during World War II.

That did not stop him from locking and loading in a string of other war films, such as “Back to Bataan,” “They Were Expendable” and “The Green Berets,” to name a few.

And Wayne always won.

Other Hollywood war movies picked up the phrase and it became a common idiom used by soldiers, coaches, teachers, athletes, television generals, reporters, commentators and politicians, including President Trump.

Despite having also dodged the draft during the Vietnam War — obtaining five deferments — Donald Trump is uninhibited when it comes to locking and loading.

After the U.S. launched its second military strike against Syrian poison chemical sites during Trump’s presidency, Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, spoke in opposition to a Russian motion condemning the attack at the Security Council. Haley said, “I spoke to the president this morning and he said, ‘If the Syrian regime uses this poisonous gas again, the United States is locked and loaded.’”

If Vassily Nebenzia, the Russian U.N. ambassador did not get it — or if he thought Barack Obama was still around — Haley added, “When our president draws a red line, our president enforces the red line.” Vassily looked vexed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who warned of retaliation if a U.S. attack took place, looked vexed as well. He backed off.

Maybe Trump saw “The Sands of Iwo Jima” when he attended New York Military Academy, graduating in 1964, just as America’s direct involvement in Vietnam was about to take off. Perhaps he stored John Wayne’s line in his memory and would conjure it when the need arose.

Nevertheless, the world has noticed that, as foreign policy goes, Trump is standing tall, and he has been from the beginning. He will not be pushed around the way Obama was.

Back in 2017 when Trump was calling North Korea’s Kim Jong Un “Little Rocket Man,” he warned the dictator that the United States was fully “locked and loaded” and ready to rain “fire and fury.”

Instead of threatening to launch nuclear missiles on America, Rocket Man has halted all nuclear missile testing and is coming to the table to talk. Putin may be next.

Like the North Koreans, the mullahs in Iran should also take notice.

Donald Trump is locked and loaded.