There has been an interesting internecine squabble among conservatives on social media ever since Israel began bombing Iran last week. OK, maybe it's been more annoying than interesting.
The Tucker Carlson Wing of X is in perma-snit mode right now about the possibility of the United States getting involved in Operation Rising Lion in a "boots on the ground" (I've lost count of how many times I've read that in the last five days) way. There's nothing wrong with the sentiment, of course, nobody really wants to see American troops in harm's way. They are offering some false equivalencies and overlooking a few things in their zeal to occupy an isolationist moral high ground, however.
The Bootsies have been drawing comparisons to what's happening in Iran right now to the buildup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Other than the geographical similarity, it's an equivalency that's just a few neurons short of brain-dead. I'm not going to rehash what happened back in the early aughts, but there is virtually no comparison between Iraq's influence in the region back then and Iran's in 2025.
Focusing on only Iran's nuclear weapon potential is a myopic way to view the present conflict. Unlike Iraq in 2003, Iran is The Big Bad (h/t "Buffy the Vampire Slayer") in the Islamic Middle East. Yeah, the Saudis are loaded, but they don't like to get their hands dirty. They only like to get the United States' hands dirty. (Quick aside: Iran was The Big Bad in the Islamic Middle East in 2003 as well.)
Yes, the nuclear potential has to be dealt with. Charlie makes the case for that very clear in his most recent column. The mere fact that anyone has to make this case shows just how screwed up the world has gotten.
As we move on to the other stuff, Robert has this reminder:
Trump was calling for the unconditional surrender of a regime that has been at war with the United States ever since its inception. Those who are wringing their hands over the demise of Iran’s Islamic regime are paying insufficient attention to how it has terrorized its own citizens for 46 years, to the degree that Iranians in increasing numbers these days are openly cheering on the Israelis.
Robert goes into great detail about what Iran has been up to during its ayatollah years. Spoiler alert: The Mullahs have been pretty hostile towards the United States. It's not all shadowy background stuff either.
One of the favorite talking points of people who are still complaining about the Iraq war is that most of the 9/11 attackers were Saudi nationals. That's true, but they weren't getting backing from the Saudi government. One Middle Eastern government was involved, however, and you can probably guess where I'm going with this. Robert goes on to note that in 2011 a district court judge, "determined that Iran, Hezbollah, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and other Iranian government departments, as well as the Ayatollah Khamenei himself and former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani were all directly implicated in Iranian efforts to aid al-Qaeda in its 9/11 plot."
Anyone out there still need plutonium to be mad at these guys?
Not five minutes after I had claimed the headline for this column on our private Slack channel, I hit X for a quick fix and happened upon something that my good friend and partner in thought crime Stephen Green had retweeted on Tuesday night. It's long and detailed, but it's also loaded with rough language, so I won't repost it (here it is for anyone who wants to read the whole thing). I will share the money quote though: "Everything that makes Iran a problem comes from a factory, and those factories can be vaporized from the air."
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.
As the very lengthy post points out, the laundry list of things that do make Iran a problem is quite long and includes the mass production of the mines that caused most of the U.S. casualties in Iraq. In fact, it's difficult to find a bad guy in the Middle East who isn't being equipped or funded by Iran, oftentimes both. Iran has its fingerprints on the Russia/Ukraine war (I'll let you guess which side), as well as the Houthi terrorist pirate problems.
Yes, Iranian nuclear weapons are a future threat, but the murderous terrorist groups that Iran funds all over the Middle East are present-day reality. The Bootsies have extraordinary powers of compartmentalization and are just tucking away the inconvenient truths about the horrors of the Mullah regime.
It wouldn't be difficult to make the case for crushing Iran even if the nuclear weapons threat were absent. This happened while I was writing this column:
I'd say that the Iranian regime is making its own case for its destruction.
Which we can do without boots.
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