It is difficult to escape the conclusion that many Americans hate President Donald Trump so much that they’d rather see the butcher Ayatollah Khamenei alive and the Iranian people under his boot than see Trump triumph. The prospect of a decisive victory over an evil regime, a victory led by Trump, seems to alarm them more than a theocracy with an arsenal of long-range ballistic missiles and a renewed race for nuclear weapons.
This level of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is toxic — to the individual carrying that burden in their head and on their heart, and to their families and friends.
Israeli politics are famously bare-knuckled, and there was no competing with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the title of the most divisive but democratically elected head of government in the world. Until Trump came along. Now it is not even a close competition.
National security experts and public intellectuals long known for their resolute support of the robust use of American power in defense of the West are turning themselves into pretzels to avoid acknowledging that, for the third and perhaps decisive time, Trump has struck the malevolent regime in Tehran hard.
First, “45-47” ordered the master terrorist Qassem Soleimani killed in January of 2020.
Then Trump ordered Iran’s nuclear weapons program obliterated last June and warned the regime not to try again to achieve breakout.
Trump has given Israel the green light to kill Khamenei and dozens of other regime leaders. Meanwhile, the U.S. military has begun the comprehensive destruction of Iran’s capacity to threaten our allies and troops in the region.
Had Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, or any other 2016 GOP contender beaten Clinton and done these same things, Reagan and Bush-era party leaders would have cheered — and today’s most adamant Trump haters would have been leading the ovation.
But it’s Trump doing the decimating, so the TDS-afflicted have abandoned their beliefs and cannot do anything but find new and ever more creative ways to separate their old selves from their new selves.
Unlike many anti-Trump extremists, I won’t claim to read the minds of those I disagree with. No one truly knows what motivates another person, including those dragged down by their sunk costs in hating Trump.
But Trump is cutting out a malignant cancer in the Middle East that has long murdered and wounded Americans and Israelis, blackmailed our Gulf allies, and exported terrorism around the world.
When Obama ordered the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, I don’t recall any of his critics refusing to credit the former president with taking the risk. That’s because they loved America more than they disliked “44.”
Old guard Republicans who battled FDR with a ferocious focus throughout the 1930s quickly rallied to his side when Pearl Harbor happened. Because country comes before politics and personalities.
Whatever you think about President Donald Trump, whether you judge him to be the greatest president ever or the worst, do not confuse those feelings with a clear view of the world. The entire world’s population, save a few thousand elites in the alliance of tyrants, is better off with Khamenei dead and the Islamic Republic reeling. And not just because the IRGC is on its knees. Our strategic adversary, China, has also suffered two consequential setbacks in Trump’s first 15 months back in office. Their client states in Venezuela have flipped, and their client state in Iran is close to collapse.
The domestic economy grew briskly in Q2 and Q3 of last year, and only the Democrats’ absurd and purely partisan shutdown of the federal government in Q4 slowed the momentum.
Now, Trump is triumphing abroad because of the exceptional skill, training, and leadership of our military. He gave the order. He lives with the results and with casualties.
What has happened to the longtime, vociferous, and principled critics of the mullahs? For many, if not most, they’d rather hold fast to their grip on Trump-hatred than give even a golf clap to this remarkable display of courage and determination.
Make no mistake: If it goes very wrong, Trump will get all the blame. What’s stunning is that it is already obvious that even if Operation Epic Fury goes near perfectly, in the circles of those afflicted with TDS, Trump will get none of the credit. Zero. Because acknowledging Trump as the prime mover in crushing the ayatollahs would mean confronting a decade’s worth of cognitive dissonance.
OPERATION EPIC FURY IS PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH IN ACTION
Perhaps someone will break free of the anti-Trump cult and show the way out: Praise the good, blast the bad, and keep your core convictions front and center.
We are waiting for that first turning. We may wait a long time.
