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Tuesday, January 7, 2020

On Which Side?

As the Iranians trample each other at the funeral of general Soleimani, Americans are choosing sides as to how they feel about the President's decision to target the general.  Politically, essentially all Republican politicians and some Democrats are lining up in support.  Nearly all the Democrats are finding a reason to oppose the decision.  The real question is where total public opinion will come down.  Here are some of the issues to consider:

1.  It was President Trump who made the decision.  Normally, one would think that the identity of the person making a decision doesn't determine the validity of that decision, but today, Democrat politicians think that anything Trump does has to be bad.  Seriously, consider that less than two months ago when Trump moved 50 US soldiers in Syria out of the way of a Turkish attack into the north of that country, the Democrats denounced him for abandoning the Middle East.  The USA was becoming an unreliable ally they all told us, even though Turkey is our NATO ally and we had no formal alliance with any of the other players in Syria.  One common complaint from Democrats about Syria was that the USA needed to keep those troops where they had been stationed in order to confront Iran.  So two months later Trump makes a decision which confronts Iran in a big way, and the Democrats fall all over themselves in their rush to condemn that move.  They follow the Democrat mantra:  "Trump bad."  It's getting to the point where if Trump announced a new record low rate of unemployment, the Democrats would tell us that low unemployment is bad and must be raised.

2.  Soleimani was responsible for killing at least 600 Americans and attacks on more were imminent.  The President says that killing him disrupted those future attacks.  The Democrats says that killing him might lead to attacks on Americans.  In essence their argument is that taking an action which prevents attacks that we know are coming is bad because there might (MIGHT) be attacks planned in response to his death.  So does that mean that the President should have let the planned attacks by Iran go ahead to stop POSSIBLY inciting other attacks?  You figure that one out.

3.  US power has to be used in a proportional manner only, or so say the Democrats.  I'm not sure where this proportional force idea comes from.  In essence, we are not allowed to use our overwhelming power to destroy the enemy and win; we can only match the enemy in its level of force and then continue to have an endless war.  America has the greatest military force in the history of the world.  The reason we have this is so that if we are attacked, we can crush our enemy.  The idea of proportional response to which the Democrats cling is idiotic.  It's the rough equivalent of a doctor telling you that you have cancer and that he will only treat you enough to try to stop the progression of the disease, but he won't take steps that might cure you since that would be a disproportional response.

4.  Trump didn't consult with Congress before making the decision.  This is silly.  There was actionable intelligence that required an immediate decision.  Most likely it would have taken hours just to wait for Pelosi to sober up.

The truth is that Trump was taking action to protect Americans and others from future attacks that were being planned by Soleimani.  That ought to be enough to earn support from most Americans.  As of now, it seems that the Democrats are more concerned about protecting Iranian war criminals than American servicemen.  They need to reconsider which side they support.

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