Thanks, Donald.
As an anti-interventionist who has opposed all US involvement in wars since WW II and nearly all our military interventions, I send congratulations to the President for taking direct action against a pirate-state that has more than once attacked American diplomatic personnel. Peace should be an almost top priority for American governments, but it is a priority that comes second to the responsibility to defend the American people. If ever an American airstrike was justified, this is it. I am reassured by this surgical strike that our President is neither a war-monger like the Bushes nor a coward like Obama,
The past couple weeks I have been blissfully ignorant of current events. Is this sarcasm?
Hm. Now I am afraid Iranians might actually start murdering Americans – like Arabian-level murder Americans.
I hope you’re right about this, Dr Fleming, and it stops at a surgical strike. I’ve got a bad feeling. Seems the neocons like this a little too much, like maybe they’re thinking McCain’s Beach Boy Dream is about to be realized. Some of David Frum’s other unpatriotic conservatives, on the other hand, fear the worst.
I expect the Democrats and the media will be against Trump’s action. Not that they dislike intervention, it’s just that they like to be the ones dropping the bombs. Plus, they’re in campaign mode now and promising more war is no way to get elected.
One of my bumptious MIC* colleagues joyfully texted me this morning that all this “Saber rattling” is sure good for the company stock price. I guess he’s got his ethical priorities in order. The Twenties are off to a roaring start.
* – what Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address.
In the cold sober light of day, I share your fears, but my basic principle since the Vietnam years has been simple: Fish or cut bait. Since Korea, we have been fighting wars in a perverse misunderstanding of the axiom that was is diplomacy carried out by other means. Since we helped the mullahs overthrow the Shah, Iran has been a rogue state on par with the Barbary Pirates. The Carters, Clintons, and Obamas all treated their leaders as if they were legitimate officials who had any intention of cutting an honest deal or keeping their word. The only alternative offered was McCain’s lunatic desire to bomb civilians. If even half of what we’ve been told is true about the general’s activities, he needed to be taken out with minimum collateral damage. It’s the kind of deal we expect from Donald, who, when he was not making deals and bribing politicos,. was crushing rivals.
By all means, we have to wait and see what his next move is, but a ruthless strike is the only thing the Iranians will understand.
PS the reaction of the Democrats and Never-Trumpers is also, as you point out, very encouraging. Lindbergh, after December 7, knew his country was at war, and it did not matter how right he had been up to that point. He did not male speeches declaring Pearl Harbor was the result (as it was) of FDR’s failed policies. He offered his services to a rotten president who turned him down. Neither he nor the President’s critics played politics during an emergency. I am reminded of the patriotism of Cimon, son of Miltiades, political enemy of the Athenian democrats. He led a group of young aristocrats who dedicated their bridles to Athena and went off to join the sailors and foot soldiers at Salamis. There used to be men like this in America. One thinks of the unionist General Lee, when Virginia seceded from the incipient American Empire.
While I do not subscribe completely to the principle that politics ends at the water’s edge, I do think that it is entirely despicable for members of Congress to try to spin this particular straw into gold.
You say precisely what I hopefully think. There might be two or three people I know aside from FF subscribers with whom I would dare to speak frankly, but they’re other Quakers and my older brother.
Shouldn’t this be said on FB, Dr Fleming? Leftist friends are quaking for fear of WW3 and passing around the clip of the Don saying “In a 2011 video, Donald Trump predicted a ‘weak and ineffective’ President Obama would attack Iran in order to win a second term”. That puts a different spin on what we agree was a necessary assassination.
We all hope that this show of force will cool the winds of war. Our friend Dominick D (above) thinks Iran might now start murdering Americans on a larger scale. Well, that has been their rhetoric for years and they have been responsible for many deaths already. It’s hard to believe the Iranians want their country laid waste as Iraq was. Perhaps this action will make them think twice.
Thanks for the suggestion, Kellen. I don’t think of FB except as a teaser to lure people to this site.
I sure hope Mr. Trump can stick the landing on this one, because it’s one of the few foreign policy decisions that have been made during my adult life that I’m genuinely proud of. For once, we acted like a powerful nation concerned primarily with her own best interests first and not like a boarding house run by a pack of mewling grifters.
On the opening page of the Fleming Foundation site I read the “Thanks, Donald” paragraph and thought I have to click on the “read more” to see who wrote this because it is exactly what I had been thinking. Yes, most of our war fighting since WWII has an abysmal waste of
American lives, materiel, and money. There are times when we should punch back, though, and this seemed like one of them. If we are to believe the intel made public on this guy, then he’s been one of the principal Iranian actors in attacks on Americans going back to the suicide bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon. The strike not only took out him but evidently his second in command, also. This seems to me the way we should use our power and technology.