Thank God President Trump acted decisively and did what had to be done to prevent a nuclear Iran.
Still, the debate leading up to Operation Midnight Hammer revealed a dangerous strain of isolationism in the MAGA movement, reflected in the incessant caterwauling over our possible involvement: “But you promised to keep us out of foreign wars,” they whined.
With almost a quarter century of interventions since 9/11, we should be wary of another. Nation-building is futile. Foreign interventions are costly in terms of military expenditures and lives lost, and regime change can be risky.
After two decades of U.S. fighting in Afghanistan, the Taliban are back in power, enriched by $7 billion in military equipment we left behind. The last resulted from one of the most disastrous withdrawals in military history, orchestrated by a man who trips walking up stairs.
However, Mr. Trump understands what MAGA mega-isolationists do not: Foreign intervention is sometimes unavoidable.
Negotiations fail. The regimes that brutalize their own people and have auxiliaries that commit the most heinous acts imaginable often aren’t amenable to reason. Or, as John Wayne said in “Dark Command,” “It takes a good fire to burn down the weeds … to let the flowers grow.” Israel lit the fire. America fanned the flames.
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the Charles Lindbergh of the white-flag crowd, is apoplectic.
Before the Saturday strike, Mr. Carlson was sputtering about the “warmongers” on the right who were calling for direct U.S. involvement in the conflict. He included in this group Fox News host Sean Hannity, commentator Mark Levin and media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Mr. Carlson was backed by big-brain Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, who charged, in the dispassionate rhetoric for which she is famous: “Anyone slobbering for the U.S. to become fully involved in the Israel-Iran war is not America First/MAGA. Wishing for the murder of innocent people is disgusting. We are sick and tired of foreign wars. All of them.”
Once her meds kick in, someone needs to explain to the congresswoman that all wars involve the deaths of innocents, including the Allied strategic bombing of Germany (300,000 to 600,000 dead) and the atomic bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (210,000 dead) during World War II. In war, innocents sometimes suffer to prevent greater carnage.
With this over-the-top rhetoric, Mr. Carlson and Ms. Greene read Mr. Trump out of the MAGA movement that he created.
In a recent Tweet, Mr. Trump pleaded: “Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that ‘IRAN CAN NOT HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS!’” The president has been saying this for the past decade.
At the time of the Punic Wars, the Roman orator Cato the Elder ended each of his speeches by declaring, “Carthage must be destroyed.”
That’s how consistent the president has been about Iran’s nuclear program. Whether the focus is on negotiations or military action, Mr. Trump’s message has been the same: Iran cannot have nuclear weapons.
“Death to America” isn’t a throwaway line. The Iranian regime and its lackeys have been chanting that slogan for 46 years. They intend to use the nuclear weapons they are developing against America (“The Great Satan”) and Israel (“The Little Satan”).
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies has compiled a list of Iranian and Iranian-backed attacks on Americans since the Islamic Revolution. It includes almost one a month for close to half a century, among them the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 Marines. Oh, and they tried to assassinate our president.
Iran is the chief sponsor of terrorism worldwide. Its clients include Hamas, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis. According to the State Department, Tehran funneled $700 million to Hezbollah in 2020 alone. It gives Hamas $100 million a year.
So what was the prudent course of action? Should we have let the insane regime acquire nuclear weapons and their delivery system and wait to see what it did with them? Did we have to wait for a nuclear Pearl Harbor before we acted to stop the insanity?
To make America great again, we must make America safe again. That means safe streets, a secure border and a nation safe from foreign predators.
That is why we had to stop a bloodthirsty seventh-century theocracy from acquiring the means to launch a nuclear holocaust.
When they start loading you onto cattle cars, it’s too late to protest.
This column was first published at the Washington Times.