Those Democrats, along with most of the mainstream media, put approximately 100% of the blame on Donald Trump for rising tensions, escalating conflict, and disregard for their interests, but President Trump reacted to the death of an American contractor and the assault on the US embassy in Baghdad. He did not initiate this conflict, but instead retaliated for those violent acts. Of course, the Democrats called him a war-monger who was out to deflect our attention from impeachment, and someone who was just waiting for a pretext or an excuse to pulverize Iran.
This latter charge was disproven on Tuesday, Jan. 7, when the Islamic Republic of Iran thanked the United States for the “pallets of cash” deal and other favors bestowed on them by the Obama Administration by directing 15 ballistic missiles toward US bases in Iraq. Eleven of them struck targets, although no casualties resulted. It would have been interesting to see just how much of Iran would have been pulverized had any US or Allied casualties been inflicted, but that will remain unknown until Iran actually does cause some more US casualties.
The Iranians also believed that the President would respond, and they were hair-trigger tense, so when a Ukrainian airline with passengers mostly from Iran, Canada, Ukraine and other European nations (but no Americans) took off that night from the Tehran airport, they knocked it out of the sky with two Russian-made surface to air missiles. By the way, apparently several other planes took off from the Tehran airport that very night on the same flight path as the doomed plane, but none of them were targeted, so there may be a lot more behind the shoot-down than we know at the present time.
Given their propensity to lie as frequently and outrageously as possible the Iranian Revolutionary Government claimed the “crash” was due to engine failure, declared they would not let the manufacturer see the “black boxes” and said it was all America’s fault. But, growing evidence accumulated by the United States, Great Britain, Canada and other friendly governments, aided by several video images of the shoot-down as it happened, forced the Iranians’ hand, and by Saturday morning they conceded that Iran had shot the plane down, “unintentionally” of course, blamed “human error,” and said it was all America’s fault because of “US adventurism.”
Iran claimed that “In the hours after the missile strikes, US terrorist forces’ warplanes around the country increased, and some reports of airstrikes targeting strategic centers in the country were reported to numerous defense units and targets on some radar plates. It has caused more sensitivity in air defense units.” They claim the doomed plane flew “in close proximity” to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard installation, and that the plane “was in the height and shape of a hostile aircraft.” Well, actually on that night the United States did not return fire, launched no “hostile missions” and as far as we know, neither penetrated Iranian airspace nor fired a shot. Therefore we conclude that the Iranian defense radars and crews are every bit as incompetent as their air-defense crews. Also, their apology was not actually an apology, as the Iranian Revolutionaries continue to blame the United States.
And while we are on the subject of Iran, while the mainstream media and others were swayed by the large “rent-a-crowd” that was forced into the streets for Soleimani’s funeral, thousands of Iranians cheered his demise, and when the Iranians admitted they shot down the plane, the regime’s opponents took to the streets in protest, blaming the Revolutionary guards, demanding they “take your hands off our country.” Protestors are calling Ayatollah Khamenei a “murderer,” and are chanting, “Referendum” and “Constitution” and “Commander-in-Chief, resign, resign” and “Death to the Dictator.” There are reports the protestors are chanting, “Our enemy is right here, they lie and say it is America.” It should not be necessary to mention, but we will anyway, that unlike in America where one can call the President all sorts of nasty names, in Iran, anti-government protestors are frequently shot. Over 1500 were killed last month. The “peace people” around the world avert their eyes from things like that.
Well, there would be nothing that would move the world toward peace any faster than if the people of Iran rose up, and overthrew their Islamic Revolutionary Government which has imprisoned the country since 1979. Unfortunately, the Revolutionary Guards have all the power and most of the weapons -- but so did the Shah in 1979.
The response of the Democrats and the media in the days intervening between the plane was shot down and the Iranian admission was educational. They pretty well universally blamed President Trump. The House passed a completely symbolic, “makes-us-feel-good,” non-binding resolution to limit the President’s power to wage war. Pete Buttigieg said, “Innocent civilians are now dead because they were caught in the middle of an unnecessary and unwanted military tit for tat.” Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Cal.) said, If Iran did shoot down the plane, “this is yet another example of collateral damage from the actions that have been taken in a provocative way by the President of the United States.”
Back in the late 1970’s and early ‘80’s, foreign policy expert Jeanne Kirkpatrick coined the phrase “Blame America First” to describe the dismal policies of the Carter administration. Sad to say, that attitude of blaming America (especially Republicans) has persisted to this day, and has been exponentially multiplied during the Obama-Trump years. Their initial reaction is always “America” or Trump or Bush or Bush or Reagan must be wrong, and must have had some wicked, malevolent, evil intent for any of their policies. The blame America first crowd almost never proceed cautiously, are always inclined to give our adversary the benefit of the doubt (often even when there is little doubt to begin with), and when they finally concede that the other guy did something wrong, they almost always assert that such wrong action was prompted by the horrible policies of the Republican administration.Then, they want to make things right by cutting some deal favorable to our adversary.
It is revealing that not one Democrat candidate for president took the position that eliminating Soleimani was a good thing. We presume that means they would not take a comparable action if they were in office.
As we said last week, we do not know how many lives were saved when Soleimani and the other terrorists were taken out in the missile strike, but it has to be in the thousands. And if all of this could lead to the collapse of the Iranian Revolutionary Government, and the restoration of freedom in Iran, what a day that would be! And if that were to happen, we would bet that the Democrats won’t blame President Trump for it.