“The truth is simple. Iran is at war with Israel and with the U.S. It does not seek compromise or accommodation. It does not want its interests respected or its grievances redressed. It wants what it says it wants: a holocaust in Israel and the destruction of the U.S.”
– Walter Russell Mead, The Wall Street Journal
Welcome to the party, pal. I don’t normally like to grandstand, but in 2013, I wrote this column. In it, I said:
“… Iran and the U.S. are already at war. And every few years, Iran or its proxies (most especially Hezbollah) conducts another hostile act, which results in the death or harming of Americans.”
Now, Mr. Mead, a foreign policy expert who I do very much respect, agrees with me. However, I do believe that he should have come to this conclusion much earlier.
Why? Because, like in the movie “Die Hard,” there are (40-plus years of American) dead and injured bodies all over the place.
This is not all I have to say about this matter, however. The title of the Wall Street Journal piece is “Appeasing Iran Has Failed.” This is also very true.
As I also argued in this 2019 column, the appeasement of Iran does not work, because we know that in general, the appeasement of any bad actor never works. That is the whole point of the famous Rudyard Kipling poem, “Dane-geld,” whose final line was the lesson to be learned: “That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld, You never get rid of the Dane.” This poem was published in 1911.
Perhaps, just perhaps, we should learn from our history? “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” See Winston Churchill in 1948, quoting George Santayana in 1905. And perhaps, just perhaps, it is way past the time that American’s come to understand that Iran means what it says and does, and that it really does want to kill Americans, and destroy the U.S.
Adam Turner is a foreign policy expert and national security professional. He served as General Counsel & Legislative Affairs Director for the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), where he worked on U.S. national security issues focused on the Middle East, and as a former staff counsel for the Middle East Forum’s Legal Project, where he worked on the issue of protecting free speech from the threat of radical Islamists. He is also a former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he focused on national security, government oversight, and criminal law.
This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
This post originally appeared on WND News Center.