Why the Left pretends not to know the reasons we're fighting in Iran

Hint: Because it sides with Iran, as it always has, but is too dishonest and cowardly to say so.

I read the Washington Post, not because I want to find out what’s going on with the world, but because I want to find out what’s going on with the Left. For however befuddled or deceitful the Post may be about the former, it’s wonderfully reliable about the latter. Hence this story, which begins, “Four things to know about Trump’s war with Iran.” I’ll give you just the first three paragraphs, because there is only so much I can ask readers to stomach.

Drones are flying across the Middle East, buildings are being bombed, and six American service members have been killed so far after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran this weekend.

President Donald Trump says strikes could continue for weeks, and he warned that more American troops could die. He’s also offered various reasons for the strikes on Iran — but few specifics on why his administration believed an attack was necessary now.

“The absence of justification by the administration is almost unprecedented in modern history,” said Suzanne Maloney, the director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, who has advised Republican and Democratic administrations on Iran. “We are in a very uncertain set of circumstances.”

The pretense that there is no very well articulated reason for America’s military action — or that there are too many reasons so it’s just all a jumble — is probably the favorite refrain from the Left just now. Paul politely disassembled the latter part of that line, and I want to add a word or two.

Let’s start with this: It’s not “Trump’s war with Iran.” That’s just a lie. It’s our answering, after 47 years of dallying, Iran’s war on us.

Few here will need a reminder, but I’ll supply it anyway:

The invasion and seizure of the American embassy in 1979 and the kidnapping and holding of American diplomats for more than a year — until Ronald Reagan became President — was an act of war: Under long accepted international law, a nation’s embassy is its sovereign territory, and the armed invasion of it by the “host” country defines an act of war.

The Washington Post knows this but buries it, possibly because it’s in such sorry shape that it has to genuflect (even more than usual) to its Leftist readership.

In fact, the ample reasons for finally taking on Iran’s savage, Jihadist regime were well summarized by none other than the Trump-hating pseudo-conservative David French in this column in the New York Times.

As my colleague Bret Stephens has argued, the Iranian regime is evil, hostile to the United States and militarily aggressive. It has engaged in a decades-long conflict with the United States. Beginning with the hostage crisis in 1979…Iran has conducted countless direct and indirect attacks against the United States.

Iranian-backed terrorists are responsible for the Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon in 1983 that killed 241 Americans. Iranian-backed terrorists killed 19 Americans in the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996. Iran-backed militias killed hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq.

Since the second Iraq war, Iranian-backed militias have continued their attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. In fact, it’s fair to say that Iran’s efforts to attack and kill Americans have been relentless for decades.

Beyond its attacks on Americans, Iran is one of the most aggressive and destabilizing regimes in the world. It has supported Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis — three of the world’s most powerful terrorist militias — it has attacked Israel with ballistic missiles, and it has supplied Russia with drones to use in its illegal invasion of Ukraine.

Iran is deeply repressive at home. It stifles dissent, deprives women of their most basic human rights and massacres its own people by the thousands when they protest against the regime.

If you’re going to list foreign countries that should not obtain access to nuclear weapons, Iran should be at or close to the very top. Blocking Iran’s ability to develop and deploy nuclear weapons is among our most vital national interests.

Ladies and gentlemen, when David French, for God’s sake, so forcefully lays out the overwhelming case for defanging Iran, the WaPo’s pretending that there’s just no articulable basis for doing so is enough to give lying a bad name.

Abe Greenwald in Commentary is wonderfully merciless about it:

The term “hysterical amnesia” describes a condition in which a person deletes a memory to protect himself from psychological harm. In the U.S., the condition has been spreading since the start of Operation Epic Fury last Friday.

After 20-plus years of public speculation about how Israel, the U.S., or both would ultimately handle the threat emanating from the Iranian theocracy, many Americans are suddenly stumped as to why the U.S.-Israel coalition is trying to topple the regime. They just can’t figure it out.

That’s it! It’s not that the Left is lying!! It’s that, having smoked too much pot in grad school, they just can’t get what’s left of their heads around it.

Greenwald continues (emphasis added):

It’s apparently traumatic to recall that the Islamic Republic has been the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism for decades. For those who haven’t blocked this out, the facts are so well-established that one can list them by rote. Iran has routinely vowed both “death to Israel” and “death to America,” killed thousands of Israelis and Americans (and many more Iranians), expanded its reach through multiple terrorist proxies and statelets throughout the region, sought to assassinate American officials (including Donald Trump), and worked assiduously to build and hide a nuclear weapons program.

And that’s just a partial list of sins. A plausible case for U.S.-led war against Iran could have been made at virtually any point in the 46 years since Khomeinists took 66 Americans hostage in 1979. Since then, we’ve never lacked a justification for wanting to topple the terrorist regime. To the contrary, the casus belli have only grown in number. What we did lack until now, however, was the will to act and sufficiently optimal circumstances for success.

In other words, what we lacked was Trump.

I’m surprised to find myself writing those words, and I write them advisedly, since I’ve loudly criticized Trump for his mind-boggling vanity, recklessness, classlessness and just sheer nastiness, among other things. But if he succeeds finally in bringing an end to Iran’s menacing the United States and the world, it will be the most important step forward for peace and safety since Reagan and Bush brought an end to the Soviet Union.

Yes, that’s one big if. But I don’t think it’s going too far to understand that, for all the risks and pitfalls Trump’s action presents — pitfalls that have occupied approximately eight zillion column inches in the press over the last week — it’s also permissible to mention (1) it might succeed, and (2) if it does, it will re-make the world’s most volatile region in ways whose benefits are impossible to overstate.

It’s true, as Greenwald notes, that Trump is himself to blame for giving cover to some of the (otherwise obviously anti-American) criticism that’s been piled on his actions this last week:

For years, Trump helped to promote [isolationist] attitudes. They now permeate different parts of MAGA to varying degrees [just as they dominate on the Left]. As a result, he and his administration are at a loss to explain…

And here’s the punchline:

…what they clearly now understand: that strong alliances based on shared values are the guarantors of civilization, and that the U.S.-Israel alliance is the strongest of all; that it’s better to strike one’s enemies before they pose an imminent threat; [and] that liberation from tyranny is a rare miracle that the United States alone can facilitate in foreign lands.

Trump might yet lose his nerve, or numerous failings or perversions might show up (for example, he could be assassinated, something the Jihadists will want to accomplish now more than ever — and something that Trump must have known and accepted before he authorized the strike). But, as the Left is so fond of saying, the United States must take risks for peace. Last week the President took a big one. We should do everything we can to beget his success, because in this instance if in no other, his success is ours.