Our political class has repeatedly told us that the only allowable “solutions” to pressing problems are alternatives not embraced by the majority of Americans. That is why we finally turned to Donald Trump. Just one example was the border crisis – Democrats argued for mass amnesty and a wide-open border, while establishment Republicans countered by also proposing mass amnesty with a slightly less porous border. Trump laughed in all their faces, shut the border, and started deporting criminal aliens.
In the matter of foreign military engagement, we have also been presented just two bad options over the past few decades.
- Massive military commitment to foreign wars, including nation building and boots on the ground in perpetuity, all with an endless airlift of fallen troops being flown home to Dover AFB.
- Pacifism, with the U.S. never unleashing its military might, even where it is appropriate.
There is another much better option, which President Trump just demonstrated – the use of our military to destroy what needs destroying, and then leaving the mess as a lesson. If Iran attempts to rebuild its nuclear program in coming years, we can bust it all up again. We don’t have to occupy Iran or pretend that it will become a western democracy. It can figure out whatever it wants to become, but if Iran restarts its nuclear program or exports terror again, it can also face our wrath again.
I have been waiting for the U.S. to strike against Iran for more than 45 years. The lost wars of the Bush-Cheney era have driven home the futility of trying to impose democracy on those not capable of it. But still, I’ve never stopped wanting there to be righteous retribution against Iran’s mad mullahs. They attacked America on American territory when they took our embassy personnel hostage in 1979, and they’ve been killing Americans wherever they can ever since.
One of the dubious lessons learned from World War II was that we must always rebuild what we destroy in war. In that spirit, Colin Powell famously told President George W. Bush regarding the Iraq War debacle, “If you break it, you own it.”
Donald Trump has put that idea to rest. We broke it (Iran’s nuclear program) and Israel has destroyed Iran’s war fighting capabilities. And now we’re done fighting. What Iran does now is not our problem, unless/until we have to break it again sometime in the future.
With all that said, there are plenty of reasons why the mainstream American right has become so anti-war in recent years. The awful loss of young Americans’ lives in service to other countries interests - but not America’s interests - is paramount. But it is also the realization that the war-pushers have a deep reserve of ashamed-to-be-American guilt that motivates them. There is an inherent contradiction in how they go about waging war. Quite simply, they rush into foreign wars, but then refuse to fight for victory, because they believe:
- The United State has a moral obligation to fight other countries’ wars because of our power, wealth, etc.
- It is culturally offensive for the United States to inflict what is necessary to actually win a foreign war.
Donald Trump’s America-First position is rejected by this same war-loving crowd whose loyalty is to the “international community” that wants Americans to fight and to die, but not to win.
A repellant aspect of the “we broke it, we bought it” mindset is the belief that all wars require a Marshall Plan to rebuild the infrastructure and economies of lands where we battled. Perhaps Western Europe would not have rebuilt so quickly without all the American aid post-WWII, but maybe they wouldn’t now be failing welfare states either. We taught them that Uncle Sam will pay to (re)build their countries and provide their defense, thus allowing cradle-to-grave welfare, all while their politicians and populace screech about how awful the United States is. By contrast, Eastern Europeans who suffered under communism received nothing from America, but they are vocally pro-America now because they simply crave freedom, and they learned how awful the alternative was.
By rejecting “we broke it, we bought it,” President Trump is also rejecting any more 21st century occupations and Marshall Plans. That doesn’t mean the enemies of civilization will not incur the fearsome wrath of our military if they try to cause problems outside their borders. But under President Trump, if we have to break it, we’re just going to leave it.
Social Contagions: The Recovered Gluten Sufferer Who is Now Transing Her Children
My latest piece at The Blaze has been published. “Her son wears dresses, her daughter’s a ‘boy,’ and it’s all for status”
It discusses how the trans fad is a social contagion preying on the same type of (non-celiac) people who got caught up in the gluten fad. A Millennial woman with whom I’m familiar was once a loudly vocal victim/star of the gluten show, but once that fad ran its course, she went back to eating bread and pasta. Now she is transing her children.
The transgender fad will fade away. But unlike the gluten fad, innocents are being disfigured for life and denied the pleasures of a normal adulthood — all in service to a runaway social experiment.
It’s behind a paywall, but if you’re a Blaze subscriber, I’d be honored if you’d give it a read.
[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]