Assuming nothing happens between the time I write this and the time you read it, it appears that Donald Trump has refused to take the sucker’s bait and engage us in open war with Iran. And while I remain more hawkish than many of my fellow supporters of the Trump Revolt against the garbage liberal elite, it’s pretty clear that Trump was right. Some quality conservatives disagree with me in good faith, but whatever makes Fredocons like Bill Kristol upset is presumptively a good idea.
Let’s clarify some things. Iran is our enemy – the notion that we might wish to avoid being drawn into open conflict today does not mean these mullah bastards don’t deserve to be hanged from the very cranes they use to murder gays, women who refuse hijab oppression and people who like freedom. We have been at covert war with them for four decades, and they’ve murdered our people from Lebanon to Iraq and elsewhere. We are morally justified in wiping out Iran’s scummy leadership and using as much force as we choose to prevent their obtaining the bomb that Obama and his coterie of collaborators tried to hand it. Don’t confuse the fact that it is not to our advantage to openly attack Iran (or at least its rulers) right this minute with the mistaken idea that Iran is not our enemy. We have every moral right to inflict ruthless payback.
Let’s clarify another thing. Iran and our liberal elite both seemed eager for open war. Since when did either want what was best for Trump, which means what is best for America? Napoleon allegedly said, and I’m paraphrasing, “Don’t do what your enemy wants you to do.” Sun Tzu advised readers to irritate a temperamental enemy into mistakes. This is what they were doing. The Iranians hit those tankers, and their denials were baloney. The Iranians shot down our unmanned drone, and their claim it was in their territory was baloney too. Why would they do that? Drones and recon aircraft had flown that path for decades. Why now?
They wanted to be attacked.
There’s no other reasonable explanation. And these attacks were the perfect provocation because they were not that provocative. No Americans were killed, and we know the Iranians have no qualms about murdering Americans – they were responsible for hundreds of American deaths in Iraq. An attack may have cost them a couple radar sites and missile batteries, but so what? With the sanctions strangling their economy, and the Persian people restless from four decades chafing under these fanatics’ rule, this would be a great way to unify the country against an outside attacker and seize the moral high ground while splitting the US off from its allies and undercutting Trump’s rule.
And our elite also wanted Trump to attack. Why?
Some are legit patriots who recognize Iran is a threat and want it erased – with them, this is a reasonable disagreement on strategy and tactics. Save your criticisms of Mike Pompeo and John Bolton for someone else – I’m glad they’re in place even if I may not agree with their strategic assessment of this situation. They are doing what they think is good for America, and we can work with that.
But others are more cynical, and less patriotic. They recognize that another war – over a robot plane – would undercut Trump’s own legitimacy with his base, maybe fatally. Trump was hired in significant part because Normal Americans were sick and tired of having their kids sent off to fight wars that our garbage elite has no intention of winning – and we had no intention of winning one with Iran. That means invading and occupying – no dice. This would be more inconclusive Mideast skirmishing. The Democrats would have loudly and proudly opposed this new war and, if they had their way, it would have defined Trump’s presidency like Vietnam did LBJ’s, or Iraq did Bush 43’s.
“Hey, wait,” one might ask. “Weren’t we just talking about one airstrike and that’s it?” Well, the advocates in DC were, but Iran might have had other ideas. After all, the enemy gets a vote, and it could have voted to massacre Americans still in Iraq or elsewhere. Once you jump into war, you lose the ability to jump out when things get ugly.
Let’s talk conspiracy theories. Is it possible that the John Kerry/Ben Rhodes Iranophile faction, still stinging because Trump binned their disastrous Iran Deal and exercising their liberal free pass on the Logan Act, told the mullahs to provoke Trump with some non-fatal pokes in order to weaken him domestically and help restore the rule of people who always put American interests last?
That is, Democrats.
I don’t know, but can we really rule that out? We keep hearing from these people about how Trump is an existential threat to America, and if they really believe that, is it so nuts to think they might canoodle with Tehran to defeat him? If you had told me a few years ago the entire senior DoJ and FBI would conspire to pull off a soft coup to undo an election, I might have advised you to take a deep breath and chill. But then I watched it happen.
So, I don’t know if it this is what went down, but no one can say you’re insane for thinking it could. And that possibility had to enter into Trump’s calculations.
Couldn’t you just feel the disappointment out there in the garbage mainstream media when Trump saw the ambush and decided, at the last minute, not to walk into the kill zone? They spent all day nailing together their cross and he decided to skip the crucifixion.
And what if the Iranians were ready and waiting for us and shot down a bunch of our planes? Can you imagine the hit Trump would have taken? Even if no one tipped them off that we were coming – it’s horrible to even write that, but can we be absolutely confident no one might think the sacrifice worthwhile if it dealt a defeat to The Donald? – there is nothing publicly disclosed about the plan Trump scrubbed that could not be guessed by a half-way competent major.
But leaving aside the politics, which adults understand you cannot do, was this a bad purely strategic decision?
At the Army War College, before it disgraced itself by cowering before SJWs and when we weren’t reading Clausewitz, we learned about the elements of national power: DIME – diplomatic, information, military and economic. There are lots of tools in the toolbox. The Iranians publicly shot down a US drone, which was a military action but was arguably more of an information (i.e., propaganda) operation. Why do we have to reply in kind? No practical military option exists to defeat the mullahs, since we’re not marching into Tehran unless Max Boot and Bill Kristol start getting their phone calls returned by the White House again. So, an attack would have been a one-time punch to show our resolve with no lasting effect on their strategic capabilities. In other words, an information operation, and not much of one since no one actually thinks Trump won’t unleash hell if the baddies do something really bad.
If you want to hurt the mullahs – and I do – you use the tools that they can’t match even as you mercilessly disembowel them. Diplomatic: Let’s help the Iranian resistance, as opposed to the Obama policy of propping up the Imam-ocracy. Let’s make them chase their own tail trying to snuff out internal opposition so they can’t cause mischief around the region and the globe.
Economic: Impose more sanctions. If the choice is doing biz with the US or Iran, Iran loses every single time. And we should leverage this crisis to our own advantage to help America prosper. The Far East (China, Japan and South Korea) gets most of its oil from the Persian Gulf. Hey, didn’t Trump just make the US a net exporter of petroleum products by undoing the Obama oil exploration self-castration rules? Asia can buy from us instead, or they can go defend their own sea lanes. Choose.
Good choice. Welcome to Texas.
We win, Iran loses. We prosper, Iran sinks into economic chaos, and eventually its people get sick of misery and those murderous Khomeinist creeps swing.
War is what the mullahs wanted because they know they can’t lose strategically in a military context – only Trump can. But they can only lose strategically to our diplomatic and economic power – if we choose to ruthlessly employ it.
Oh, the military option is still there. And the patience to await the right time to use it instead of reacting precipitously is a combat multiplier. We need to set the timetable, not our opponents.
It’s clear that Iran and certain domestic political actors – the Democrats – share a common interest in seeing Trump defeated politically. Their interests were therefore aligned in favor of the strike Trump called off. Why again would we do what our opponents want?
The nice thing about Trump is that he has no intention of being played for a sap.
If Trump gets talked into yet another unnecessary war – the “unnecessary” qualifier is important because a justifiable war won’t hurt him – then it’s pretty clear he loses in 2020 and we would then start down the slope toward the nightmare I write about in my action-packed yet super-snarky novels about the United States’ split into red and blue countries, People's Republic, Indian Country and Wildfire. Not surprisingly, liberals and the sad Loser Boat crew from the failed Weekly Standard hailed my novels as “Appalling.” So, declare war on those goofs and check out my books.