This last week was like a bad bet, one where President Trump insisted he could get Democrats to defend Iran and someone said there was just no way that was possible. If this hypothetical existed, President Trump would’ve won, easily.
Maybe I grew up in a different country, but I swear there was a time when the country rallied together in times of crisis. Petty differences always existed, but as a nation we had the “your mamma” rule – where someone could say anything they wanted about their mother, but there was a line for everyone else. Americans are free to gripe about what our government does, what they don’t like about the country, but when someone outside the country did something to an American, that was the line.
It’s still a line, but it’s gone from a line we collectively drew for the rest of the world to a line dividing left and right.
There are Americans who don’t care if Americans are kidnapped, tortured, or murdered by foreign actors and governments if it can be used to benefit them politically.
A recent Morning Consult poll found only 47 percent of Americans supported the killing of Iranian terrorist leader Qasem Soleimani. That less than half the public supported the move is disturbing enough, but that 40 percent opposed it is disgusting. (14 percent had no opinion, which tells you a lot about the people who will decide the upcoming election.)
Within those numbers is a testament to the political divide in the country. Fully 70 percent of Democrats oppose the action that killed someone with the blood of more than 600 American soldiers on his hands. There have always been lunatics in political parties, but how can 7 in 10 Democrats oppose that?
Are they all cowards, afraid the Iranian military could win a war against the United States? Some are, maybe, but you’d have to have suffered a recent, severe closed-head injury to really believe that. Are they peaceniks, opposed to anything military-related? A few, no doubt, but not that many because they were silent for 8 years as Barack Obama rained hellfire from drones on whoever tickled his fancy if they found their name on the “disposition matrix,” the former President’s kill list.
No, it’s because it was Donald Trump who made the call.
To a large swath of the Democratic Party, anything Donald Trump does is bad and must be opposed. If they dropped dead, only to be revived by him, they’d complain his CPR bruised their chest.
Some Congressional Democrats (not all, about 70 percent, oddly enough) publicly declared the administration to be lying about future threats from Soleimani, were he to live. His record of murder, not only of Americans but of Syrians, Iraqis, his fellow Iranians, etc., (including the week he was killed) didn’t matter to these people; they wanted “more proof.” They and other Democrats in the media turned into the OJ jury – no amount of evidence was going to change their minds because “Orange Man Bad.”
Michael Moore, after having personally reached out to the “supreme leader” of Iran in support of our surrender, wondered at the size of Soleimani’s funeral. He asked “is there an American General for whom millions of us would turn out for his funeral?”
Moore, who is what would happen if Joseph Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl had a (big) kid, wraps his hatred of this country in words like “love” and claims to support our troops. The former honored guest at the Democratic National Committee and surrogate of Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders went on a long, sarcastic rant about how innocent Soleimani was. “I can’t seem to remember exactly where Soleimani’s Revolutionary Guard landed on our shores. Was it New Jersey? Miami Beach? Big Sur? Where did they invade our sovereign nation?” he asked. He, along with his fellow travelers, expressed no concern for the hundreds of murdered American soldiers he referred to as “our beloved troops.”
Does anyone really believe any of these people are putting our troops or our national interests first? Does anyone believe they’re on America’s side, or is it more likely they’re on their own side?
Disagreements over what is in the nation’s best interest have always existed, but that’s not what we have here. The progressive left is now upset that President Trump acted in the best interest of the United States because it was President Trump who did it. There are a lot of names you can call someone who sides with the enemies of a country because they think it’s in their best interests, none of those words is “patriotism.”
Derek is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily radio show on WCBM in Maryland, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.