By: Cliff Kincaid
The critics on the left opposed President Trump’s war in Iran, and now a few cranks on the right are upset he ended it too soon. Both sides are wrong. America’s military has performed splendidly, and President Trump has wisely decided to declare victory and pursue a settlement that puts pressure on Iran to denuclearize its country and move the regime in the direction of neutrality in the region.
Some object that the regime still exists, in some form, and it is still committed to regional instability. However, its nuclear program is in ruins, and the regime’s hierarchy knows that we know where they are and that further American bombing is always an option.
Iran, the only country in the world where Shia Islam is the official state religion, is further isolated as a result of the war. It is surrounded by Sunni Arab countries that understand its dangers to the region, especially after Iran attacked them.
The coverage is a rerun of the Vietnam War, when U.S. military forces were defeating the enemy, but the media transformed the American victory at Tet in 1968 into a defeat.
Trump can’t win with these people, demonstrating the fact that there is TDS on both sides of the political spectrum on the subject of Iran.
“If it weren’t for me, Israel would not exist today,” Trump has told the publication Axios, and he’s right. Tragically, some supporters of the Jewish state do not understand this fact and are ganging up on Trump’s plan to end the war. They risk further isolating the Jewish state.
Vice President JD Vance put these people in their place, noting that “Over the last three months, two-thirds of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars.”
A simple thank you will do.
Vance added, “Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel. And he happens to be the head of state of the world’s superpower.”
I repeat something I said in a previous column: America didn’t go to war against Iran on behalf of Israel. If some supporters of Israel don’t understand this fact, they are putting Israel’s interests above those of the United States.
The only alternative to the Trump proposal to end the war is a massive American ground invasion of Iran, and nobody wants that. Or do they? When you watch critics of Trump on programs on Fox, you get the impression that they DO want more American blood.
On the right, the New York Post has attacked the president with sensational front-page editorials insisting that Trump’s proposal constitutes surrender. These critics are the new version of liberal newsman Walter Cronkite.
As the CBS Evening News anchorman, Cronkite campaigned against the American effort to save Vietnam from communism and attacked President Reagan for his anti-communist and anti-Soviet views. His coverage of Tet helped convince LBJ that the war was unwinnable.
Later in life, as if to confirm his role as an agent of influence against his own government, Cronkite made an appearance before the World Federalist Association, which favors world government financed by global taxes, and called for the U.S. to renounce “some of its sovereignty” and pass a series of United Nations treaties. Then-First Lady Hillary Clinton also appeared, via videotape, to pay tribute to the former CBS Evening News anchorman.
In 1988, Cronkite addressed a left-wing People for the American Way conference and denounced President Reagan for the “unilateral” military actions in Grenada, when the U.S. military evicted a communist gang, and Libya, when Reagan ordered a military strike in retaliation for the acts of terrorism against Americans.
Incredibly, Cronkite said that the smartest president he ever met was Jimmy Carter. The Carter presidency paved the way for the coming to power of the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the Islamic zealots in Iran. Later in life, Carter became an advocate of the interests of the Arab/Muslim world against Israel.
By contrast, President Trump has been the best friend Israel ever had, as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has stated.
However, America never went to war for Israel. Equally significant, by any objective measure, Trump’s peace deal is a victory for the United States, militarily and economically. The alternative, to repeat, was a full-scale ground war against the regime, promising thousands of American war dead and wounded warriors.
Haven’t we had enough of that?
The war was an honorable cause, but it had limitations, as we saw in the failure of the people to rise up against the regime. Too many Iranians were here in the United States, appearing on shows urging American action, rather than in Iran, organizing a counter-revolution against the Ayatollah.
I remember one dentist I had in Maryland who escaped Iran. Many fled rather than stay and fight. It’s tragic.
One Iranian resistance group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, claims to be working for the collapse of the regime, as well as democratic change. Its president, Maryam Rajavi, said she “welcomed the emerging U.S.-Iran understanding aimed at ending hostilities while asserting that peace poses a greater threat to the survival of the Islamic Republic than military confrontation.”
If true, then “peace” is an opportunity for the people of Iran to fight for themselves, perhaps with outside support.
Senator Roger Marshall notes, “First of all, we’re dealing from such a position of strength that we have broken them militarily and economically — their inflation rate is 70%, their GDP per capita now is equivalent to someone that lives in Haiti, the poorest country in this hemisphere. So, I think we’re just in such a much better position of strength. We’ve destroyed their military, their economy, they’re on their knees, they really are.”
If these facts are not acknowledged, the critics are either infected with TDS, biased, or have ulterior motives. I suspect some want Americans to die in a ground invasion of Iran. But Americans have had enough of these bloody American wars in the Middle East.
Like Vance, I suggest that critics of the deal in Israel regroup and rethink their positions. The conduct of a few critics in Israel threatens a reduction of American support for the Jewish state. I am astounded by their attacks on the American President. He is not Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden, or Barack Hussein Obama. He is Donald J. Trump.
- Cliff Kincaid is president of America’s Survival, Inc. www.usasurvival.org
