President Trump’s strike on Iran is a seminal turning point for American foreign policy.

For years and years and years, we have been boxed into the idea that every war is the Iraq War.

Critics of President Trump — of “Peace through Strength,” going all the way back to World War II, particularly on the Left but now on the horseshoe theory Right as well — have suggested that people who do advocate for American military action liken everything to the lead-up to World War II, to Neville Chamberlain and Munich. They say not everything is World War II. Not every war is the Iraq War.

You might notice that the vast bevy of people who keep complaining about President Trump’s strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities keep comparing this to the Iraq War. That’s crazy.

These people who keep saying that a one-off strike on a nuclear facility — which is significantly more like killing Osama Bin Laden or killing Qasem Soleimani or killing Anwar al-Awlaki — is somehow more akin to the Iraq War: a full-scale, hundreds of thousands of troops ground invasion of a country in the Middle East, followed by a 20-year effort to rebuild the country and remold the government.

You have to be empty-headed to make that comparison.

But there is an Iraq War syndrome that has set in the American body politic that suggests that every military action is like the Iraq War. It’s very much like the Vietnam War syndrome that set in after the end of the Vietnam War, when every military action was supposed to be exactly what America did in Vietnam. It took Ronald Reagan breaking the Soviet Union in order for that to begin to end, and it truly ended when George H. W. Bush helped win the first Gulf War.

The lesson of Vietnam and Iraq is not: “Military power, or the threat of its use by the United States is bad,” or even worse, “The United States itself is bad,” which is an argument that is being made all the time by the horseshoe theory Left and the horseshoe theory Right.

The real lesson here is that victory is a possibility. Victory can be achieved if the commitment is clear and if the goal is defined.

President Trump had a goal. He defined that goal. He made a commitment to that goal. And then he pursued an action in pursuit of that goal.

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The same people who are suggesting that President Trump is wrong to bomb the nuclear facilities are the same people who suggest that the United States was wrong to use the atomic bomb to end World War II, or that America has been historically evil over the course of decades. The Howard Zinn Left and the Tucker Carlson Right shake hands on this particular prospect.

But that perspective is wrong. And it is not just wrong, it is a nefariously bad perspective, because it damages America.

The world is better off because of American power — properly used. Of course power can be misused; anyone can misuse their power. We’re the most powerful country in the history of the world, with the most powerful military in the history of the world.

But — when you use your power properly, you can effectuate good things happening.

President Trump is not George W. Bush. He ran against George W. Bush’s foreign policy. President Trump has never engaged in a long-term nation building project, nor will he. He defined this mission specifically.

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I do not actually think that the people warning about a “quagmire” are saying something understandable. I think they are saying something dishonest. I think they are lying to you.

Israel and the United States are not talking about regime change. When President Trump says that there may be regime change in Iran, he means from the Iranian people. That’s the same thing that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said. Do you think Netanyahu, from a country of 9.7 million people, two million of whom are Arabs and two million of whom are ultra-Orthodox Jews, that tiny country is going to deploy hundreds of thousands of troops to Iran to engage in nation-building? Do you think the United States is going to do that?

If Iranians don’t overthrow the regime, that’s their prerogative. But that does not mean that you allow that regime to go nuclear.

All of this raises a question. What exactly is the opposition? What is the opposition here? What is the case against the strike on Iran?

You can basically make three cases: the constitutional, the pragmatic, and the ideological. I think there are a lot of people who are making the constitutional and pragmatic arguments who secretly want to make the ideological argument.

The ideological argument is that America is bad, that when America involves itself in foreign policy, we are doing something evil and immoral, that our enemies, our geopolitical opponents, never have their own philosophy or their own interests. They are always, in every case, driven by American blowback. The only reason people are bad in the world is because America did a bad thing to them, and then those people turn bad.

That, of course, is ignorant. It is stupid. It is wrong. Civilizations have different interests. Countries have different interests. Those countries are driven by interests that are not always about America. Iran pursued regional domination in spite of what America was doing, not because America was a threat to Iran.

Iran decided that it wanted to obliterate Israel, wanted to wipe Saudi Arabia from the map, and wanted to take control of Yemen, not because of America, but because that is the Iranian goal. Russia is invading Ukraine because that has been their longstanding policy, not because Ukraine was moving in a more pro-American direction. Russia decided it wanted to invade Ukraine because it has been Russian policy since the 1990s to reunify with Ukraine, or at least turn it into a proxy regime.

Countries have their own rationales. The ideological case, a Howard Zinn-America-Hating-First case, has been adopted by many on the horseshoe theory Right.

Then there are people masquerading as constitutionalists who are interested in the constitutionality of what Trump is doing. This idea that the War Powers Act (War Powers Resolution) somehow prevents the president of the United States from engaging in a one-off strike is absolute sheer nonsense. It is not true. First of all, there’s serious doubt as to whether the War Powers Resolution, passed by Congress in 1973, is even constitutional. It may, in fact, violate the Article II prerogatives of the President of the United States. Article II, Section II of the Constitution says, “The president shall be commander in chief of the army and navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states.” The president is the Commander-In-Chief.

Only Congress has the power to declare war under Article I, Section VIII, Clause XI.

But did we declare war against Iran? Is there a war against Iran? One-off airstrikes do not mean a full-scale war against a country. They don’t. If that’s true, then we’ve been at war many, many, many, many times since World War II, all across the globe. But that is not what war constitutes. The Supreme Court has said so.

The War Powers Resolution states: “In the absence of the declaration of war, the president must report to Congress within 48 hours after introducing U.S. military forces in hostilities, which must end within 60 days unless Congress permits otherwise.”

There’s only one problem. Do you think the United States is engaging in 60 days of on-the-ground hostilities with Iran? We barely engaged in 37 hours of hostilities with Iran. Does this amount to a War Powers Resolution violation?

Then there are those people “deeply worried” about the pragmatic effect of this, who were not worried a few years ago when President Trump killed Qasem Soleimani, and who didn’t seem particularly worried five minutes ago, before this all happened, when Iran had terror cells throughout the West, but now they’re very, very worried.

Iran has been pursuing terror attacks, including an attempted assassination of the current President of the United States, for decades. At this point, they have planted terror cells all throughout the world. If the idea is that planting terror cells buys Iran impunity and Iran can now act with complete impunity all over the globe, pursuing nuclear weapons, and that means you can’t do anything about it, then what is the purpose of American foreign policy? What is the purpose?

I’m not saying there isn’t a risk when you take action. I’m saying that the greater risk would be a nuclear-armed Iran with terrorist cells all across the West. That’s the bigger risk.

This “pragmatic concern” is, in reality, something else.

It is a belief that America’s foreign policy is inherently bad, that America is the nefarious actor in the world. It’s wrong and it’s stupid.

President Trump knew exactly what he was doing when he ordered the strike on Iran. 

And he was absolutely correct.