IS THE IRAN WAR NECESSARY?

In recent days, many have discussed the wisdom of Operation Epic Fury and whether it was necessary or justified.  Particularly in the wake of the Joe Kent resignation, the concern has been raised to an even higher level.  Because this is such an extremely important issue, a non-committal or politically-biased answer is the worst kind and will not wash.  

Therefore, when asked this question the other day by a family member, my response came in the following form:  From what I’ve been able to gather, Joe Kent is a straight shooter, the best of the best Americans can produce, and a genuine patriot in the truest sense of that word.  So that no doubt took a lot for him to resign from serving a president he liked and, for the most part, supported.  It sounds like he did it out of conviction, not because he was a Trump hater.  Having said that, I am still beyond dismayed how he could have believed that we (America) had no cause or reason.  That was exactly what Europe and America said about Hitler and Germany back in 1936, and history proved both were very, very wrong. 

Winston Churchill was the lone voice in the wilderness, and history proved him right.  He saw the threat long before Hitler unleashed his fury.  If the world would have listened to Churchill and stopped Hitler after he broke the Treaty of Versailles in 1936 (and we justifiably could have) , we would have saved the lives of six million exterminated Jews, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of American, British and Russian soldiers who died in WWII.  It was a massive miscalculation on America and Europe’s part, and both paid dearly.  It’s still painful to think about, but in all, fifty million lives were lost for that egregious misjudgment … fifty million. 

Iran is our modern-day Germany.  Since the crazed Mullahs took over in 1979, they’ve vowed death to America and Israel, waged war on both, killed thousands of Americans and American soldiers through the years – either directly or through their terrorist praxis (Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis) – and were behind the October 7th slaughter of Israel (the worst attack on the Jewish people since the holocaust) … and they just mowed down over 30,000 of their own people for protesting the regime.

In addition, they were literally weeks away from getting a nuclear weapon, a fact supported not only by American and Israeli intelligence, but by UN nuclear authorities.  To say Iran was no threat is just mind-blowing to me.  What world do people live in?  What level of denial are human beings capable of in the name of politics?

Since 1982, Iran has been the chief exporter of terrorism in the world.  If this was Obama, Clinton or Biden doing this, the Left would be endlessly singing their praises.  And the fact (well-reported) that the surrounding Arab nations are quietly (behind closed doors) thrilled at the prospects of bringing Iran to its knees should speak volumes.

So the debate centers around whether we had just cause to start this war or not. And if so, why?  Was it done for regime change (because the Iranian leadership is sick) or because they were an imminent threat?

To me it’s just splitting hairs because it was clearly both.  Iran is an evil regime AND they are an imminent threat – to America, to Israel and to the stability of the Middle East.

It also comes down to a question of who you believe – a host of United States Senators (who insist Iran was only weeks away from a nuclear weapon, because it only takes a couple weeks to enrich from 60% to 90%), American/Israeli intelligence who say the same, and UN nuclear authorities (not a source who typically agrees with America or Israel on anything? … OR … one dissenting voice within the Trump administration?  

But if the prognosticators and talking heads are trying to prove that this wasn’t solely and exclusively about “imminent threat,” that is not rocket science either.  Of course it wasn’t – nothing this complex is that uni-dimensional.  Of course a decision of this nature has not only far-reaching security ramifications, but major humanitarian and geopolitical implications as well.

Humanitarian – freeing the Venezuelan and Iranian people is a moral and worthy mission, just like freeing Cuba will be.  All three people groups have been begging America to liberate them, because we’re the only ones who could.  The more countries we can free from abusive oppressors, the more we do the work of God.  (When I was in social services work, none of us liked removing kids from their families, but in some very serious cases, it was necessary to protect them from further unspeakable forms of abuse.)  

The whines of the naysayers notwithstanding, the same applies to other countries.  Even Bill Clinton admitted extreme regret that he did not send in troops to Rwanda back in 1994 to protect the Tutsi’s from the genocide slaughter that ensued at the hands of the Hutu’s.  One million beautiful Rwandan lives were lost because we didn’t, where a strong US military presence could have stopped the slayings in a matter of days.  We can’t be the world’s policeman, but there are situations where a conscience demands we intervene.

Geopolitically – breaking up the evil alliance of Iran, China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea is something none of us elderly folk ever thought was possible, much less being able to see it happen in our lifetimes.  I’m grateful to God to still be alive to witness it.  It majorly crimps China and Russia’s future plans for expansion, relegates them to survival mode, and puts them at our economic mercy.  In short, it defangs and declaws them, which is good for freedom, which is good for the world.

For those hugely important reasons, combined with the ever-present imminent threat Iran posed, Operation Epic Fury had to happen.  Repeat: IT HAD TO HAPPEN.  And it took a leader like Trump to make it happen.  With all his rough edges, he fully gets it, even if the rest of the world does not – just like Churchill read the writing on the wall with Nazi Germany, even if the rest of the world did not.  Leaders like Trump and Churchill, with their uncanny geopolitical instincts and unequivocating moral clarity, only come along once in a generation.

Moreover, it’s becoming more clear to me in this debate that it ultimately boils down to how one defines “imminent threat.”  I’ve been watching this unfold since 1979 (as have so many others my age), when the radical and wicked Islamic Iranian regime ousted the Shah of Iran and became an “imminent threat,” on any given day in any given year, to the Middle East and American interests.  So because “imminent” is a very relative term, for me at least (admittedly, a simple man), this is not a tough call.

Nonetheless, while not a tough call, it is a judgment call … and based on all I’ve seen, as best I can tell (with my limited knowledge), I trust Trump’s judgment at this point.  He appears to me to be living in reality.  The rest of the world – especially the Left, the media and a few honest dissenters – appear to be in some alternate universe called La-La Land, forever addicted to “the paralysis of analysis.”

In times like these, we need leaders who are unafraid to act.