Tags
barack obama, Ben Rhodes, Dead Soleimani, Donald Trump, Iran, Laurence Tribe, Osama Bin Laden, Pete "I'm Gay" Buttigieg, Rose McGowan, Susan Hennessey, Ted Cruz
I’ve been watching, with no surprise whatever, the aftermath of the so well deserved demise of an Iranian savage. So insane, so unmoored from any contact with reality, has the D/S/C Left become, there seems no bottom to the well of their hatred and depravity. There is, of course, a common thread: whatever Donald Trump does or doesn’t do, he’s responsible for everything bad—never anything good—that happens anywhere in the known universe. Melanie Phillips explains:
The liberal world is aghast. President Donald Trump has done something that repudiates the very rules of nature by which Western progressives live.
Faced with a military general intent on ramping up the decades-long war of conquest he had been commanding for his fanatically anti-Western regime, Trump liquidated him before he could murder anyone else.
Cue liberal horror and outrage. Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani—the man responsible for a vast infrastructure of global slaughter and oppression, and with blood on his hands from American and British soldiers, as well as Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis, Jews and others—was described in The New York Times after being annihilated by an American drone as ‘universally admired.
He was probably not so universally admired by the thousands he slaughtered or their surviving friends or relatives, but hey, you have to break a few eggs if you’re going to conquer the world for Islam and Leftism.
The actress Rose McGowan tweeted imbecilically: ‘Dear #Iran, The USA has disrespected your country, your flag, your people. 52% of us humbly apologize. We want peace with your nation. We are being held hostage by a terrorist regime. We do not know how to escape. Please do not kill us.
Rose who? And wasn’t the Iranian flag a nice touch?
Howling that Trump had provoked another world war, progressives totally ignored the fact that for the past four decades, Iran had been waging war against the West and Israel and anyone who stood in its way.
Instead, they viewed Soleimani as a murder victim to be mourned while Trump was the war criminal.
Democrats who had hailed the extra-judicial killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 as a personal triumph for President Barack Obama now claimed absurdly that killing Soleimani was unconstitutional.
And in his hundreds of drone strikes, Obama killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocents. The Trump strike on Soleimani was carefully executed to kill only Islamist barbarians, but that’s different because shut up, and Trump.
If anyone doubted the shocking moral decadence among the West’s liberal elites, this reaction has provided ample evidence. In this upside-down moral universe, genocidal fanatics, whose dissembling enables liberals to take refuge in the fantasy of a trouble-free solution, must be negotiated with and appeased.
They are never condemned for the aggression they conceal, nor is what they do considered a serious threat. The only aggressor said to threaten the peace of the world is the person who stops them in their tracks.
Let us, gentle readers, sample just a bit of the D/S/C insanity infecting the Twitterverse. As I’m sure you know, on the same night, and roughly at the same time, that Iran fired 16 ballistic missiles at Americans in Iraq, a Ukrainian 737 with 167 people on board was shot down shortly after leaving an Iranian airport. It fell on Iranian soil, and all on board were killed. The Iranians have, as always, lied, claiming it fell from the sky due to a “mechanical” issue. However, our intelligence agencies, and others around the world, certify the Iranians shot down the plane with one of their Russian antiaircraft missiles. The Iranians are refusing to release the black box to those most capable of interpreting the data, which does not help their case.
Some are suggesting the Iranians didn’t intend to kill anyone with their missile barrage. They only wanted to save face. If that’s so, why did at least four of their missiles entirely miss their targets? Most likely is that their ordnance wasn’t nearly accurate enough to be fired to “make a statement” without hurting anyone. That no Americans were killed was likely due to their lack of accuracy, our preparedness, and luck. Do we condition our military strategy on whether not an enemy was able to kill our people? Isn’t firing ballistic missiles with 1000 to 2000 pound warheads a sufficient indication of intent? If they didn’t intend to kill anyone, but accidentally did does that make a difference? The next time Iranians or Iranian backed terrorists kill Americans, Iranian luck just might run out.
D/S/C presidential candidate Pete “I’m gay and more Christian that you” Buttigieg immediately blamed President Trump:
Of course! It was completely unnecessary for President Trump to kill a genocidal madman responsible for the deaths of some 600 Americans and the wounding and maiming of thousands more who was planning imminent attacks on American diplomats and military personnel. What could he have been thinking?
Susan Hennessey, executive editor of the Lawfare Blog, also added her expert military analysis:
Quite so. The Ukranian airliner was in Iranian airspace, but not on what any rational person could consider an attack profile. It was apparently at roughly 8000 feet, traveling at a bit over 300 MPH, climbing not descending, and outbound, not inbound toward any possible target. There was no American return fire at the time. Only incompetence and/or negligence could have authorized the release of missiles. One might argue that Hennessey was speaking only of a figurative “crossfire,” but that’s her only possible excuse. There was no actual crossfire of any kind. The only ordinance in the air was fired by Iran. Actually, she has no excuse.
Noted D/S/C legal scholar Laurence Tribe also couldn’t resist:
But of course! The Iranians would never take any hostile action absent intolerable provocation by Donald Trump. They’ve certainly never done anything hostile before, have they? Here’s another example of Trump Derangement Syndrome:
And consider this by the Associated Press:
The headline was later changed, but the AP, as usual, did not admit error. Any such headline and accompanying story by the AP is particularly egregious because the AP is a “wire service.” News outlets around the world pay to use their content and photos, so when they get it wrong, thousands of other news outlets get it wrong too, and the damage is incalculable. Even if the AP issues a retraction, that’s virtually never seen, and the damage is done.
Supposedly sober journalists and pundits often claim our contemporary schism is due to intemperate rhetoric on both sides of the political aisle. Show me, please, gentle readers, anything remotely like this foisted on the public by normal Americans.
If that wasn’t enough, Senator Ted Cruz has sponsored a resolution in the Senate honoring our intelligence and military assets that killed Soleimani. It’s essentially identical to the resolution that did the same after the death of Osama Bin Laden. That resolution passed unanimously. No Democrat is, as this is written, supporting the current resolution.
Do D/S/Cs want civil war? This is how they get it. Do they want another Trump term? This is how they get it. Do they want Americans to believe they’re not only terminally insane, but the enemies of America and Americans? This is how they get that.
For a very well informed analysis of what’s actually going on in the Middle East from someone who lives in the neighborhood, see this article by Carolyn Glick.
Great piece, as always! Just in the minor errata dept., it’s “ordnance”, not “ordinance.” Keep up the good work!!
Dear Mercy Huss Stahn:
Thanks! Spell checker. Fixed now.
I finally learned something on this blog! Great observation, Mercy! Even I had to look that up as I would have spelled it “ordinance” as well. Interesting unrelated definitions. I’m alleged to be college educated and Mike is a teacher! :) Just goes to show………………. never too old to learn something you should have learned a half-century ago.
As I have been doing the mental forensic analysis in my own mind as to why I missed this it seems one of those issues where the definitions being so different that I never connected any context. I have heard the word “ordinance” before as it relates to things like civil laws… “city ordinance yada-yada”. But the context through me off so badly… and never mentally brought the two together. But I would have used “ordinance” to mean “ordnance” in this case myself. Little things like this intrigue me about language. Toss a ball of string my way and I’ll go after it. :)
Dear Doug:
Arggh. Darned spell checker…
Hehe.. good save.
Iran attacked a sovereign nation; Iraq. Why has this not been discussed?
I’m not all that sure Iran has “attacked” Iraq.. if your meaning of attacked is something akin to the past Iraq/Iran War. If anything it’s some level of insurgency against Iraq using proxies to take advantage of all the tribal animosity and governmental confusion after we “nobley liberated” Iraq from Saddam. Then ISIS came into the picture and made everyone fight them. It’s all a confusing mess over there.
Dear Doug:
Oh, I don’t know. I sort of think most folks would consider being hit with 16 or so ballistic missiles with 1000 to 2000 pound warheads an attack, but they’re probably just sensitive that way…
Dear Voice in the wilderness:
Well, I’m sure Iran more or less considers Iraq their territory…
Iran has been at war with the US since 1979. For the most part, the US has pretended otherwise. But a war only ends when the losing side admits defeat. Trump’s combination of very tough sanctions and periodic military strikes is a first in this long war. His threats to impose economic sanctions (secondary sanctions) on ANYONE doing business with Iran are credible given his past actions in office. And I doubt any dictator is willing to seriously test him militarily.
Trump has placed Iran into a very tight spot. Let’s hope and pray that the Iranian people, and the world, is soon freed from Iranian terror.
Rose McGowan dated Marilyn Manson, co-starred in the TV series Charmed, and appeared in the horror movies Scream and Grindhouse. So she is obviously an expert on foreign policy, and qualified to be the international spokesperson for America.
I know military weapons and equipment from a local (i.e., city or county) law. But I still sometimes say (or type) “ordinance” when I mean “ordnance,” or vice versa.
And auto correct and spell checker complicate matters by fixing things that ain’t broke.
And Trump taking out the Iranian general in 2020 not only provoked Iran to shoot down the Ukrainian civilian aircraft, he provoked Iran to declare war on the US in 1979. Yeah, right.
Just as the US Army Air Forces shooting down Admiral Yamamoto in 1943 provoked Japan to bomb Hawaii in 1941.
Dear Rose McGowan, you might want to see the definition of appeasement.
Appeasement: the hope that the lion will eat you last. But of course, once the lion is hungry he eats the weak ones first.
Dear The other Phil:
What you said.
Rose McGowan, what RIcky Gervais said the other day – he was talking about people like you.
In Yemen in 2011, Obama purposefully and knowingly targeted and killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen, with no judicial or congressional oversight. Later we targeted and killed his 16-year old son, also a US citizen. The father was clearly an enemy combatant and legitimate military target, but from a civil libertarian standpoint his killing is much more problematic that any of Trump’s recent strikes.
This is just another example of the left’s hypocrisy.
Dear The other phil:
Yeah, but that’s different because shut up you racist, and TRUMP!
An interesting twist…. on Jan. 29, 2017 Trump ordered a strike on a group in Yemen, one of which was al-Awlaki’s 8-year-old daughter. I am guessing she was not the target but collateral damage.
President Trump’s line in the sand was simple: Kill of injure just one
American citizen or soldier and we will respond with force. Every
time radical Islamists crossed the line Ojugears drew, he backed up
and drew another. What a difference! By taking out General sliced
Salami bits and pieces and one of his key proxy leaders, Trump
sent a warning to the Mad Mullahs that any attack by a proxy group
tied to Tehran, will result in near immediate retaliation. This is how
Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt responded to provocations by
Muslim terrorists in the past.
The next attack should trigger the Arthur MacCarthur option. If they
do it again, it will be time to up the level to Jan Sobieski or Charles
“The Hammer” Martel. If they do not get the message, it may be
necessary to go Vlad The Impailer on their asses.
One cannot play by the rules of the Geneva Convention (which does
not protect terrorists, spies, and other unlawful enemy combatants)
when dealing with barbaric fanatics using 7th century rules!
PS Prince Vlad got a bad rap. He was simply answering barbarism
with the barbarism of the Muslim invaders in Europe. He also
became the all-time winner of the Halloween lawn lawn decoration
contest. He was a Christian crusader who got sick of seeing his
people raped, murdered, beheaded and mutilated.
Mike, I have a package coming from e-Bay. It is an out of print
DVD and while pricy, I got a reasonable deal. It is called The
Day Of The Siege. It is the story of the Siege of Vienna in 1683
and the commoner King Jan Sobieski of Poland’s role in the
battle. It was the first time a European army repelled an attack
by the Muslims that led to their eventual expulsion from Europe.
Dear Leonard Jones:
Sobieski’s story is one of the great stories of history, and one of the little known. The Poles are our great ally.