The “progressives’” reactions to Trump’s elimination of Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s blood-soaked chief of their foreign adventurism, covered the whole range of clichés we can predict whenever this country acts vigorously to defend its interests and security
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Iran is a special case. For forty years, with a few exceptions our leaders have preemptively cringed in the face of Iranian aggression, conjuring up the specter of a widescale war in order to justify inaction.
This bad habit has led to appeasing policies that have emboldened the mullahs into ever-increasing aggression in the region from Iraq to Syria to Yemen.
As Churchill said of the Bolsheviks, the activists and media “hop and caper like troops of ferocious baboons amid the ruins” of our political culture. But the responses of some Democrats reveal just of how fossilized their foreign policy thinking is.
The Democrats questioned the legality of the killing, or claimed it was a wag-the-dog distraction from impeachment. But fear-mongering is their favorite motif.
Joe Biden, who opposed killing Osama bin Laden, claimed “we could be on the brink of a major conflict across the Middle East.” Elizabeth Warren read from the same script: Taking out Soleimani was “reckless,” and “our priority must be to avoid another costly war.”
Ben Rhodes, an Obama minion, linked Soleimani’s killing to Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, which “averted a war,” a claim redolent of Neville Chamberlain’s “peace in our time.”
He claims Trump’s withdrawal from the deal “started this dangerous cycle of escalation that we are still on.” Don’t forget buffoonish AOC who fretted that Trump engaged in what is widely being recognized as an act of war...”that now risks the lives of millions of innocent people”
Then there are the usual calls for “diplomatic engagement” and “dialogue,” the corner-stone of the “postmodern” foreign policy promoted by the “rules-based international order”
The font of all received wisdom, The NY Times advised that Trump “lessen tensions by opening some form of dialogue with Iran,” and stop demonizing the world’s worst state-sponsor of terrorism “as the premier evildoer in the Middle East.”
As if Obama’s diplomatic outreach to Iran––which poured $150 billion into the mullahs’ war chest and put the regime on a glide-path to nuclear-tipped missiles––had been such a success.
The Federalist’s Ben Weingarten: “The irony is that those now hysterical in adamantly arguing that Trump’s strike is going to lead to a massive conflagration in the ME were directly responsible for aiding, abetting and enabling Iran” to the extent that it could pose such a threat
But we shouldn’t exaggerate Iran’s military prowess, as we have done from the beginning of our conflict with Iran, and as antiwar Democrats and Leftists have done in subsequent conflicts like the First Gulf War in 1991, the second in 2003, and Afghanistan in 2001.
Jimmy Carter set the tone in 1979 with his flabby reaction to the hostage crisis, partly because of his naïve human rights campaign and American guilt over its Cold War foreign policy of supposedly coddling dictators.
Thus was established the Iran Cringe: conditioning our foreign policy regarding the theocracy on fear of how they might react, and the unknown consequences that might follow. It’s true that during the Cold War, we had to calculate possible responses of nuclear-armed Soviet Union.
But while we cringed during the hostage crisis, fearful to respond with force, the Soviet Union boldly invaded Afghanistan, no doubt encouraged by our reticence and indifferent to our, or the UN’s, scolding.
We see the same contradiction today with Iran. As we fret over possible reactions to our destroying the assets and leaders of a country that has declared war on us and killed our troops, tiny Israel has launched over 1000 airstrikes against Iranian troops and matériel in Syria––
—59 attacks in 2019. What’s been Iran’s response? So far, their proxies launch missiles easily intercepted by Israel’s antimissile defense systems, while the mullahs launch braggadocios threats.
The difference is Israel is feared because it always punishes aggression with force, whereas for decades we have accepted Iran’s murder of our soldiers and citizens, responding at best with bluster at the UN and flabby economic sanctions.
We can’t gamble with American lives that “something will turn up” to keep nukes out of the mullahs’ hands, or the regime will collapse under its own corrupt weight, or some diplomatic magic will secure a peace-deal with murderous fanatics.
With Iran imploding economically and facing internal resistance, now is the best opportunity for kicking away the last rotted timbers of the mullahcracy. The first step is to stop cringing in the face of its aggression.
(via Bruce Thornton)
(via Bruce Thornton)
