Since December, the Iranian regime has slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent civilians who have done nothing more than demand a change in their government. Here in America, we take such a thing for granted because, despite the flaws in our electoral system (thanks, Democrats!) we peacefully elect new representatives on a regular basis.
For the past five decades, Iran has had no such luxury. They languished instead under the Ayatollah and various Islamist presidents who have imposed strict Islamic law on the country, especially the women, while becoming the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism.
Every President since Jimmy Carter has, by and large, allowed Iran to flourish to get to the point where we are today. In the last three weeks, we learned that Iran was not only back to enriching uranium to make nuclear weapons, but that it also had missile capability to reach parts of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
And for almost as long as I've been alive, President Trump was consistent on his views about Iran. Which is why it was no surprise to me when he finally pulled the trigger and began bombing those troglodytes back to the Stone Age (not that it's a particularly long trip, mind you).
The only way to fight, and win, a war is through the total obliteration of the enemy. Weak rules of engagement, vague "nation building," and a refusal to unleash the overwhelming might of the military lead to unnecessary deaths and drawn-out wars.
We must win in Iran, and it seems we're on the path to doing so.
That disappoints many on the Left, who have let their blinding hatred of Trump lead to their excusing of the most abhorrent regimes on the planet, including Iran.
Howard French over at Foreign Policy despises the President so much that he wants us to lose the war, and for the Iranian people to suffer more, all to stick it to President Trump.
It is precisely because the U.S. body politic has found no way of reining in Trump that we must hope that the current conflict with Iran can finally do so, argues columnist @hofrench. https://t.co/S0bKXbP2aJ
— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) March 24, 2026
Here's the argument:
The far bigger problem that underpins all of these realities is that the United States is governed by a malignant narcissist whose megalomaniacal tendencies have bloomed alarmingly before the world’s eyes during his second term in office. Scarcely a day goes by without more stark evidence of this fact, from his vulgar and grandiose remaking of the White House (including a new ballroom) to designs to place his likeness on U.S. currency to his power-drunken statements about “taking Cuba” and being able to do whatever he wants with a sovereign country—all while still obviously unchastened by his government’s deepening imbroglio in Iran.
It is precisely because the U.S. body politic has found no way of reining in Trump and imposing reasonable limits on his power that we must hope that the current conflict with Iran can finally do so. In eras past, when dangerously toxic characters have imposed their grip on the country’s governance, Congress, the courts, and U.S. civil society have generated a kind of immune response, restoring the nation to a semblance of health. Think of President Richard Nixon and Watergate. Think of the moment when, in 1954, Joseph N. Welch, the chief counsel for the U.S. Army, upbraided fascism-inclined Sen. Joseph McCarthy, famously challenging his reckless red-baiting during a hearing, saying: “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
It is impossible to cast an Iran ruled by Islamic clerics, with its record of domestic and international violence, as heroic. But the possibility of Trump being able to destroy another country and impose his personal whims and authority on yet another nation has become more frightening than a stalemate or even an embarrassing end to the war for the United States.
It's an incredible admission. French not only wants Iran to be able to continue brutalizing its people, but to obtain long-range ballistic missiles and nuclear capabilities that it will use to terrorize not just Israel, but Europe and the rest of the world.
Why?
Because, in his mind, that's preferable to letting President Trump have the win on Iran.
Extrapolate that thought out to its only logical conclusion: the Left would prefer we all suffer, and even die, instead of allowing President Trump to govern us. I have long said that if President Trump announced tomorrow that his administration had found the cure for cancer, Leftists would run to court to block it before injecting us all with carcinogens.
French even gives away the game here by blaming "the body politic" for failing to rein in President Trump. By that, of course, he means the 75 million of us who voted for President Trump in a free election that he won fair and square. When Democrats win, even with the narrowest of margins, it's a mandate for them to govern as they see fit, the rights of the minorities be damned.
When Republicans win, the Left believes it's their duty to resist that government, to thwart the democratic process, and to undermine the will of the people. They're hypocrites, and dangerous ones that that.
I think I speak for all sane Americans, and Howard French is not one of them, when I say I want to see evil lose, no matter who pulls the trigger. That's why I celebrated when Barack Obama, a man I loathe and a terrible President, finally took out Osama Bin Laden.
This is what it comes down to: the Left, afflicted with a terminal case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, would rather see America lose than see the President win. They would rather watch Iran’s mullahs continue their reign of terror than admit that strength — not weakness, not appeasement — is what stops regimes like this.
That’s not resistance. That’s political rot, and it goes to the very core of the American Left.
When your hatred of one man outweighs your desire to see evil defeated, you’re no longer on the right side of history. Far from it. You’re rooting against your own country and for the continued suffering of innocent people. And that’s a stain no amount of moral posturing can wash away.