Further thoughts about the situation in Iran

I continue to believe that Trump did the right thing vis-a-vis Iran by killing Soleimani, the terrorist, and these are a few random thoughts to explain why.

At a base, reflexive level, I’ve gotten to the point at which anything the Democrats are against, I’m for. If they think we should continue our 41-year-long policy of appeasing Iran . . . well, they’re wrong. They’re wrong, first, because they’re Democrats who are living in a peculiar kingdom equally compounded of Marxism and Insanity, and they’re wrong, second, because appeasement doesn’t work.

To those Democrats (and some NeverTrumpers) who say that it’s warmongering if we abandon the delicate dance we’ve been doing with Iran for almost 42 years, a dance in which they take the lead, flinging us dangerously around the room while we desperately try to keep up then I’m a warmonger. But I’m a very specific type of warmonger.

I’m an anti-war warmonger. That is, I’m anti-war in precisely the same way Churchill was in the 1930s when he urged strong and immediate action, including military action, to stop Hitler before the latter was able to amass too much power. Had everyone been as anti-war as Churchill was — which means identifying and neutralizing tyrannical bullies early — 40 million people would not have died.

Not only is Iran a bully, it’s a very clever bully, for it has worked on American fears (for the American political class has never recovered from 1979) and politics (see above, about Democrats) to hide the fact that, while it has chutzpah and blood lust, it lacks actual military strength.

On the one hand, Trump (no doubt recognizing the coming conflict) has taken myriad steps in just 3 years to help the military recover from Obama’s depredations. On the other hand, Iran, despite using American funds to ratchet up its ballistic missiles and its extra-territorial proxies, doesn’t have much of an army. Outside of the Revolutionary Guard, it’s in bad shape (and I’ve heard that most of its many “ships” are just motor boats). As a reminder:

On the issue of proportionality, let me refer you to Wolf Howling’s post on the subject.

Once you get past the Democrat howls about proportionality, assassination, and “poor Iran,” and look at their more somber pronouncements about Trump’s strike at Soleimani, you discover the more thoughtful people are wrong too. Take, for example, an opinion piece at the New York Times, entitled “American Foreign Policy is Broken. Suleimani’s Killing Proves It.”

The author is Jonathan Stevenson, identified as a “senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.” In other words, he is a spokesman for the same foreign policy establishment that has, for 41 years, told Americans just to suck up any Iranian provocation, anywhere on the globe, because Iran is scary.

After agreeing that Soleimani was a bad guy, Stevenson then says, predictably enough, “Iran is scary.” To support this, points to Bush and Obama, both of whom left us with catastrophic foreign messes, and both of whom decided not to kill Soleimani when they had the chance. They made this decision, which Stevenson believes was the correct one, because they consulted the “experts.” He then methodically works through the opinions Trump would have gotten had he spent days and weeks consulting with various agencies, as both Bush and Obama did.

Stevenson is certain that, had Trump spoken to the D.C. echo chamber, all of its experts would have told him just to hold steady on the course. This course would include abiding by Obama’s decision to turn over billions of American dollars to fund Iran’s nuclear ambitions in the hope that, because we paid for the nuclear bombs, Iran would eventually opt not to use them on us.

Summing up Stevenson’s gripe with Trump’s decision, the pure and proper Leftist advice is do the same thing we’ve been doing for 42 years (only with more verve, stupidity, and taxpayer money) and hope for a different outcome. If I have to choose between advice from the D.C. Swamp and Churchill (“an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last”), I’m going with Churchill every time.

Moving on to another subject, with the earthquakes near Iran’s reactor, it would be ironic, wouldn’t it, if Iran were accidentally to nuke itself? Likewise, I would not be surprised at all to learn that Iran accidentally shot down the Ukrainian plane when someone panicked and thought it was an American retaliation for last night’s strikes against the military bases in Iraq. This would help explain why Iran is refusing to give the black box to Boeing for its examination.

In a viral video, an Iranian-American woman finds disgusting the Leftist tears for Soleimani. After explaining briefly just how bad he was, she says that people all over the Middle East are celebrating that killer’s death:

Lastly, I’ll refer everyone to my annual Passover post. I believe that the message of the Passover story extends beyond the obvious one of God liberating the Jews from slavery. Instead, I believe that the ten plagues — each worse than the other and all visiting terrible horrors on the Egyptian people — are to remind us that tyrants do not care about their people. They care only about their power.

No matter how the people groan and cry in the streets, as long as the people do not threaten the tyrant’s power, he is content with their suffering. The tyrant will only act when he is personally threatened, as was the case with the killing of the first born. Trump, by taking down Iran’s second most powerful person, has truly threatened the Iranian tyrant.