Now He Owns It
Trump gambles with his fragile MAGA coalition—and America First.
Oh what a difference a week makes.
Way back then, we were talking about the State of the Union. You know, a unique set of domestic problems that America First solutions were going to fix: Replacing income taxes with tariffs, reducing a Democrat-driven cost of living, combating fraud and urban crime, ending “identity politics,” acknowledging biological reality, voter ID, and secure ballots.
Why, President Donald Trump even challenged his radical opposition to reaffirm that “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens…” They did not, and it was their bizarre agenda, we thought, that would be at the heart of the midterm elections in eight months.
Now, all bets are off.
Operation Epic Fury is under way and for all its initial optimism, a little realpolitik is in order. If the “war on terror” has taught us anything, it is that toppling regimes is a lot easier than replacing them. Compared even to the bipartisan failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria (more on that later), just toppling the government in Tehran may cost more in blood and treasure.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reportedly warned the president of munitions and deployment constraints and is now adding forces in the Middle East. Iran is four times the size of Iraq with over 90 million people. Ayatollah Khamenei is gone, but his death likely strengthens hardline paramilitary loyalists in the 200,000-strong IRGC, and no one knows how many ballistic missiles Iran has left.
It has already retaliated against regional rival Saudi Arabia, taking its major oil refinery offline. Safe haven UAE has come under a barrage of attacks, causing panic in wealthy enclaves like Dubai, directly adjacent to the Strait of Hormuz energy chokepoint. Qatar has suspended production of liquefied natural gas after attacks by Iranian drones.
Caine and others have noted there likely will be more U.S. casualties.
It all seems incongruent with an Iran already weakened by a series of strikes and sanctions. Its proxies such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Islamic Jihad have been effectively wiped out, and last summer’s Operation Midnight Hammer ostensibly “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities. And Russia and China have not substantially aided Iran as it tries to withstand joint U.S.–Israeli pressure.
So why bomb a “paper tiger” to smithereens?
As with Iraq, we are told that Iran had or was about to have “weapons of mass destruction.” In this case, a nuclear weapon. Of course, we’ve been told that Tehran was close to acquiring a nuke for the last 30 years. But hey, as every member on the House Armed Services Committee can tell you, they’ve “been at war with the United States for 47 years.”
Well, uh…not exactly.
After the 1983 Beirut barracks suicide bombing—that Ronald Reagan refused to avenge on the grounds that “we never had the intention of getting involved in Lebanon’s civil war”—almost every terrorist attack outside the region has come from Sunni-affiliated groups that have far closer ties to Saudi Arabia than Iran.
The Taliban (back in charge in Afghanistan), ISIS, al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, and, of course, Al Qaeda—responsible for around 3,000 dead on 9/11—lead the list of terrorist perpetrators responsible for actual attacks. They are not Shiites backed by Tehran, but Sunni offshoot groups.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Reagan’s mentor, understood the complexities of the region. Ike, who abhorred war from personal experience, advocated for a restrained approach to the Suez Canal crisis because the U.S. could hardly settle ancient animosities in the war torn region.
“Of course,” he cautioned, “there could be no change in our basic position, which is that we must be friends with both contestants in that region in order that we can bring them closer together. To take sides, could do nothing, but to destroy our influence in leading toward a peaceful settlement of one of the most explosive situations in the world today.”
Fast forward to a neoconservative era that started in earnest with Lyndon Johnson, and the U.S. not only decided to spend blood and treasure mediating the theological disputes between Arab and Jew, but between factions of Islam—primarily Sunni and Shia.
And, in a tragic height of irony, intervening in this religious war has put America’s own dominant faith tradition in the crosshairs. From Syria to the West Bank, Christian communities and churches have been under violent siege.
In Damascus, we got rid of Alawite Bashar al-Assad, who was protecting Christians, only to put in power a “reformed” Al Qaeda Sunni leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa. We’re now getting out all together, following the collapse of security in abandoned prisons holding thousands of ISIS bad actors.
To be sure, the current president didn’t cause the problem, and most of MAGA believes he understood the failed premise—the same one that put the Shah of Iran in power as a result of Operation Ajax, a CIA/MI6 coup in 1953. The Iranian Revolution and rise of Ayatollah Khomeini was the blowback.
Indeed, we police the world at our peril.
Trump personifies his own movement, so perhaps he has the prerogative of redefining it. But “regime change” from Tehran to Moscow has little in common with non-interventionism. And if the U.S. was devoted to keeping “lunatics” from enriching uranium for a nuke, North Korea and Pakistan (where Osama Bin Laden hung out) wouldn’t have one.
No, this is “regime change,” and whatever side you may be on and however you parse it, it’s at odds with a whole lot of Trump supporters. The only thing that those of us who harbor doubts about it can say is, “I hope he’s right.”
Because if he’s not, the midterms are finished—and so is America First.
What folly if in the interest of freedom in Iran, America loses her own. Recent revelations confirm a “deep state” FBI had surreptitiously obtained more phone records than previously thought, even those of Kash Patel and Susie Wiles. Former national security advisor and current Netflix board member Susan Rice is promising further retribution, saying there will be no “forgive and forget.” Netflix’s failure to bail out a corrupt CNN (in its losing bid for Warner Bros. Discovery) that buried so many Democrat abuses probably has more implications for the homeland than another hopeless agreement between myriad factions and sects fighting over the rightful successor of the Prophet Muhammad—and European colonialism.
But this is no longer about empire or even oil. It’s about religious ethnicity, which means there will be no end to Mideast conflicts the U.S. can’t stay away from.
Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee contends an Israeli “right of return” means claim to the entire MidEast, saying, “It would be fine if they took it all.” The speaker of the House admitted that since “Israel was determined to act with or without the U.S.” we were forced to move.
So the “imminent threat” was not Iranian jets bound for the mainland, incoming ballistic missiles armed with a nuke, or even a breakdown in talks.
It was, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed,
that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher than those killed, and then we would all be answering questions about why we knew that and didn’t act.
In Venezuela, one could cite hemispheric concerns and the fact that Nicolas Maduro, at least technically, was a fugitive from American justice. But was the regime in Iran, in power for a half century, really enough of an “imminent threat” to justify circumventing the constitutional prerogative of Congress to debate and declare war?
Naturally, the armchair warriors at the Wall Street Journal are on board, declaring, “The biggest mistake President Trump could make now would be to end the war too soon.” Yet it is hard to escape history, no matter how many Fox News “military analysts” try to rewrite it. And it goes back a lot further than Baghdad. The Lusitania, “Remember the Maine,” the Gulf of Tonkin and Nord Stream come to mind, right alongside Ike’s warning about a perpetual “military industrial complex.” Charlie Kirk understood it, but he is gone.
The rest of the so-called “conservative” media are already rethinking their Johnny-come-lately MAGA conversion. And make no mistake, the GOP in Congress is poised to snap back to the Bush–McConnell status quo quicker than you can say RINO.
So for the sake of our country and a president who has done much to secure its future, I hope it all works out.
Because now he owns it.
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