When Obama got word that Bin Laden was in our sights, he gave the OK to send in Seal Team Six and dispatch Bin Laden to eternal damnation. The Democrats cheered Obama, as though he somehow had done something mighty or brave. I never understood that. What President, other than a Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren, would not have given the OK? Where was the courage, the guts, the greatness?
What was the risk in OK’ing taking out Bin Laden? That our intelligence might have been wrong? The cost-benefit equation was so one-sided. If that was the intelligence the President was given, then that was an incredibly easy call. Even fair-minded Obama opponents would have recognized that, given the intelligence, it still would have made a positive statement even if Bin Laden had not been hiding in the reported compound: that we will get the guy, one way or another, sooner or later. In any event, it was a wonderful American moment, and Republican conservatives greeted the Bin Laden wack with joy, even as Democrats were delirious with glee. No Dem complained that Congress had not declared war or that the President had overstepped his Constitutional authority. He is the commander-in-chief, period. Bin Laden was evil and needed to be wacked. The moment presented itself. All fair-minded Americans understood this.
Recently, Trump did something amazingly courageous when he authorized taking out Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Jeffrey Epstein of the Middle East, who raped dozens of young girls, headed ISIS and authorized their horrible terrors, and predictably was mourned in the corrupt Washington Post’s obituary as an “austere religious scholar.” Trump’s risk was that he had a Democrat Congress actively politically gunning for him, and any mistake in the intelligence would get him personally into a world of negative outrage from the hypocritical left. The intelligence was pretty good but not as solid as with Bin Laden. The location, rather than in the relatively accessible Pakistan urban area where Bin Laden lived, was in the middle of a Syrian wasteland, with Abu Bakr changing locations almost nightly. But Trump gave the approval, and our Special Ops team took him down, as he died like a dog, like a coward, whimpering, crying, screaming all the way, dead as a doornail.
Given the incredible evil that Abu Bakr represented — who could dispute what ISIS is? — the Democrats were muted in their approval. They did not dare argue that Congress had not declared war. Yes, the Democrats in the House complained that they had not been consulted in advance, but to heck with them. Trump had no choice but to keep the Democrats out of it. These Democrats are not the patriots of the days of FDR and Truman, JFK and Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. These are different Democrats. They regard themselves as “patriotic,” but they interpret that word as justifying — as their “patriotic” duty — leaking national intelligence secrets to the media, sabotaging the White House at every opportunity. With Adam Schiff long ago having proven himself to be — truly, not just polemically — a bald-faced liar without any scruples, a leaker, how could the President bring in the chair of the House Intelligence Committee? Honestly, beyond all politics, Schiff simply cannot be trusted. And the same with Pelosi. So of course they were not consulted in advance.
And now Soleimani.
Most Americans do not know who Soleimani was. Do not count on the Corrupt Journalist Corps to clarify. Qassim Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, the external arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),was the person singularly responsible for exporting Iran’s Shiite terrorism throughout the world. The extension of Iran’s claws in Yemen? That’s Soleimani. Iran setting up improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq? That’s Soleimani. The Shiite Hezbollah terrorist group that has enabled Iran to take control of much of Lebanon through that terror surrogate? Soleimani. Iranian military and air bases and personnel in Syria? Soleimani. In Hamas Gaza? Soleimani. Qassim Soleimani personally was responsible for the deaths of more than 600 Americans in the Middle East and for the permanent disfigurement and other severe wounding of thousands more. That all was Soleimani. He was the linchpin. He connected the terror groups with the funding. He knew the bankers. He traveled to Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan to oversee the creation of Iranian Shiite surrogates and to oversee their organization and evolution. He was the mastermind. Iranians regarded him as their national military hero and wrote songs and hymns about him. The Grand Ayatollah of Iran deemed him akin to his son. That is who Soleimani was.
Emphasis on “was.” The past tense is confirmed by his ring that was found and the ring-finger part that was left behind, since they could not even find any dental leftovers. The only cavity left was in the airbase runway. Trump gave him a different finger. By the way, what was he doing in Baghdad’s airport anyway? A winter vacation in Iraq celebrating the New Year?
When Soleimani’s people took their surrogate violence to a new level recently by killing an American contractor, it marked a major moment in the Trump presidency. President Trump has been remarkably restrained in actual fighting abroad, as he has endeavored to scale back America’s interminable overseas conflicts, to bring the boys back home, and to save billions along the way. Trump talks tough, but he has been so restrained that some have noted that, when Iran’s surrogates attacked Saudi interests in Yemen, America stayed out of it. But now there was a direct killing of an American by Soleimani’s surrogates. And Trump hit back incredibly hard, wiping out major Soleimani installations in Iraq and killing 25 or so of his men. Soleimani read the tea leaves, knew the political terrain of Iraq, and gauged the political mess in Washington. Consequently, he had his surrogates in Iraq go wild and attack the American embassy in the protected “Green Zone,” which was supposed to be well protected by Iraqi government forces and therefore virtually impregnable. Instead, the Iraqi government forces essentially stood down, allowed the rioters to run amok, and they invaded and demolished the front welcome area of the American embassy before being driven back.
The Democrats and their Corrupt Journalist Corps were downright gleeful. They called it “Trump’s Benghazi.” They really took joy in feeling that they now could salvage Jimmy Carter’s 444-day, 1979-1981 Tehran embassy fiasco and Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi disaster by asseverating that Trump now had stumbled in the same way. But he did not. In Benghazi, the American ambassador was murdered, while Hillary lied to America through yet another liar, Susan Rice, claiming that some Islamist religionists merely were upset over a short YouTube film that no one had seen, certainly not in Benghazi. We now know Hillary and Rice lied because the Hillary emails that later came out — the ones she did not bleach in time — revealed that, while she was lying to Americans about a YouTube video, she secretly was emailing to her daughter, Chelsea, what really had happened and why.
But this Iraq incident was not Benghazi, and it was no 1979 Jimmy Carter embassy disaster. Even as the Democrats were gloating, taking a bizarre Schadenfreude in the crisis of an American embassy being invaded, the Trump Administration was keeping its cards close to the vest. His enemies in the media and among their Democrat allies take great joy in saying that Trump cannot keep secrets, that he blurts on Twitter, that he is a security risk. But he showed with Abu Bakr and again with Soleimani that, when the need demands prudent silence, Trump keeps secrets with the best of them. No one saw it coming — not the Democrats who have nothing to do but play childish impeachment games, not the Corrupt Journalist Corps who have nothing to do but blame Trump for everything imaginable, and apparently not Soleimani or his entourage either. But America’s embassy had been invaded the day before. And unlike Jimmy Carter, who played it sensibly and cautiously and prudently — and ended up with a hostage crisis that created a career for Ted Koppel and a nighttime television show for ABC — and unlike Hillary, whose mismanagement and outright bungling of Benghazi is legion, Trump gave his approval for a responsive strike, and the next day Soleimani was evaporated, except for a bejeweled fourth finger to ring in the new year. The strike also killed several other Shiite militias’ leaders, including Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iran-backed militias in Iraq known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.
There should have been a moment of national unity here in America, as there was when Bin Laden was terminated. Instead, the Democrats and their Corrupt Journalist Corps went into overdrive. “Trump did not consult with us first.” “He can’t do that if Congress does not declare war.” “Now we really will have problems with Iran.”
Yes, Democrats. Now we really have problems. A terror country incited its Iraqi surrogates to overrun an American embassy, posing a reminder of 1979 and Tehran. They then sent their international terror mastermind to Baghdad Airport to meet with their Iraq-based terror surrogates to plan and launch a series of brutal murderous attacks on American interests, including against our diplomat corps and military personnel stationed there. America was being severely tested. We know from Jimmy Carter and Hillary what happens when that test is failed. This President did what the moment demanded. It was a terribly difficult but correct call. There very well may be serious Iran retaliation. That is the world in which we live. They want to destroy us — but on their time frame, when they are all prepared to do so — and they are building nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles to deliver them here by air freight. The Trump Administration has imposed on them brutal yet peaceful economic sanctions to deter those aims, and those sanctions are bleeding them. The Ayatollahs’ regime could resolve the sanctions by acting like a civilized country, but that is not ideologically where they are at. They are determined to destroy us. The Obama Iran Deal never stopped them nor detoured them from their mission, as they continued secretly violating its terms even before Trump correctly walked away from the deal that also saw Obama and Kerry secretly fly $400 million ransom to the Ayatollahs there.
It is a tough time in history with an evil adversary because prior Administrations failed to act when the time was more propitious. So it is not a matter of whether we will have military problems with Iran but when — and on whose time table, theirs or ours? Think back: What if America had taken on Stalin immediately after World War II? What if we had taken on the early Mao? What if the West had taken on Hitler in 1935? In each case, it would have been messy, bloody, disastrous. And yet, by taking on evil on our time frame, we would have saved so many millions more. That is the moment we now are in with Iran. They stormed our embassy. That is an act of war. They know exactly what they are doing and planning with each of their surrogates from Iraq to Yemen to Lebanon to Syria to Gaza. And they now tested America’s resolve. Jimmy Carter was a Neville Chamberlain, and we ended up with Ted Koppel and Nightline. Hillary Clinton and Obama were utterly out of their league, and that resulted in ISIS growing from a “junior varsity” and spreading horror and death throughout the Middle East — and beyond. With Soleimani directing the surrogates, the next step in the much bigger conflict took place at the American embassy in Iraq, and Trump was tested: Is he all hat and no cattle, all talk and no action? With the Democrats in Washington focused on nothing but impeachment, can he handle a massive threat like that while distracted back home?
Not only was Soleimani watching. Putin is watching. The Korean Doughboy is watching. Xi and China are watching. And our allies in Europe, Africa, South America, Asia, and Australia are watching.
Trump’s political enemies cannot figure out how he does it. They investigate, subpoena, impeach — and still he leads from the front, still he leads the country forward. He has done it on the economic front and in so many other fronts. In evaporating Solemani, permanently reducing his carbon footprint, Trump showed he is not to be trifled with, even with the pests in the Democrat House — the Washington Gnats — buzzing around him and at him. Yes, the Evaporation of Soleimani will have consequences. But human history, especially over the past century, has taught that inaction in the face of rising state terror and tyranny has even more severe long-term consequences. It is a demonstration for many to contemplate. As it happens, Qassim Soleimani will not be among those contemplating it.
https://spectator.org/soleimani-abu-bakr-the-democrat-washington-gnats-and-the-corrupt-journalist-corps/
https://spectator.org/trump-averts-a-benghazi-and-a-jimmy-carter/
