The dust had yet to settle over the remains of Iranian terrorist Qasem Soleimani before Democrats began criticizing the action by President Trump. Of course, they allowed that Soleimani was a terrible murderer and they do not lament his death, but by their measure taking him out in the wake of a violent Iran sponsored attack on a US embassy and amid concerns of more imminent threats was dangerous and irresponsible.
They fretted that mighty Iran would slap us back, there were warnings of sleeper cells in America, proxy forces killing Americans in the Middle East, some vast cyber capability that could badly damage America. In reality, the Iranian response was literally the weakest air raid they could muster without totally losing face. The message was clear; Iran does not want the war that Democrats promised we were on the precipice of.
And yet, Democrats and many in the media are still in near hysterics about the “Iranian threat.” In the Washington Post, disgraced former FBI man Andrew McCabe who for some reason has jobs at new outlets assures us that the threat has not abetted, but rather, that Iran will find sneaky ways to further retaliate for Soleimani’s justified killing. Sen. Chuck Schumer likewise fears that Trump’s actions have made America less safe. But lets backtrack here a bit.
Over the past six months Iran has shot down an American drone in international waters, attacked Saudi oilfields, bombed an airbase causing the death of an American contractor, and stormed our embassy in Baghdad. What exactly did we think they were planning next? Brunch? And more importantly what did the Democrats now so terrified of Iranian backlash want to do about these escalating attacks to which Trump had responded with enormous restraint until last week?
Since we are talking about the Democrats their answer probably would have been to shower Iran with money, relax sanctions, and beg them to stop being so mean to us. But at least one Democrat seemed to want a harsher response to Iranian violence. Here’s a tweet from US Senator Chris Murphy that aged about as well as a Florida meth addict.
The attack on our embassy in Baghdad is horrifying but predictable.
Trump has rendered America impotent in the Middle East. No one fears us, no one listens to us.
America has been reduced to huddling in safe rooms, hoping the bad guys will go away.
What a disgrace.
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) December 31, 2019
Clearly, Murphy is calling for a more robust approach to Iranian aggression, one that would make them, as he says, fear us. But after Trump, finally fed up, directed exactly such an action, the senator had this to say:
6/ Soleimani was a bad person. I don't lament his death. But it has weakened our security. It didn't deter Iran from attacking us again, it's getting us kicked out of Iraq, and it restarted Iran's nuclear program.
That's exactly why something like this should come to Congress.
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) January 9, 2020
Wait, what? So on December 31, Murphy was worried that Trump had not shown enough strength in the Middle East, but by January 9 he was certain that just such a display of strength weakens our hand. There is only one way that this makes any kind of logical sense, and that is if the only principle one actually holds is that Trump is bad and whatever he does must therefore also be bad.
This paranoid terror that Democrats now have of Iran comes as most analysts agree the Soleimani killing and Iran’s milquetoast response has de-escalated a situation that Iran was rapidly escalating. Put simply, what they now fear Iran will do is exactly what Iran was already doing. And very importantly, unlike Assad in Syria, the Ayatollah now knows that Trump’s red line is real and crossing it will trigger dire consequences.
Could the Iranians launch some cyber attack on the economic sector, for example? Sure. But what they now know, that they didn’t before is that any operation, cyber or otherwise, that results in American deaths will be met with a swift, deadly response and increased likelihood of a war they demonstrably don’t want.
The Democrats new slogan seems to be, “We Are Terrified Of Iran 2020,” and it smacks in no small way of cowardice. As my colleague John Daniel Davidson pointed out in these pages yesterday, the Democrats have put themselves in a position of almost having to hope for a deadly Iranian response, because if one is not forthcoming all their whimpering will be revealed to be needless and Trump’s strategy will have succeeded.
This is the United States of America. We are the world’s only superpower, we have the greatest military in the world, and the most awesome set of capabilities any nation on earth has ever had. Expressing fear of a second rate authoritarian regime to own Trump isn’t just dumb, its frankly un-American. Show a little backbone, Democrats. The way to handle a bully is to punch him in the nose, which is exactly what the president did. This shaking in fear in the face of Iran is not as good a look as the Democrats think it is.
