Former American President Harry Truman was a geopolitical master. The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not to bring an end to the war (by the time the bombs were dropped Japan was already a destroyed, defeated nation) but to send a message to Russia - 'Look what we've got'.
Donald Trump follows in his footsteps. Yes, the ousting of the Venezuelan dictator, Nicolas Maduro removed an oppressive, communist tyrant; but it also secured for the US the vast oil reserves of the country, thus keeping them out of the hands of America's arch-enemies, Russia and China.
Yes, the toppling of the Islamic regime of Khamenei and the mullahs is an effort to free the Persian people from nearly five decades of religious oppression, anti-Israel hatred, and sponsorship of Islamic terrorism in the Middle East; but it is also a means to secure Iran's equally vast oil resources, thus keeping them from Russia and China.
The American president plays 3-D geopolitical chess. He has a master plan that goes farther than the obvious, but his short-term objectives are equally important. Who but the most fevered, Trump-hating Left can object to America's ridding two countries of their longtime, oppressive dictators? The people on the streets of Tehran are shouting 'USA', American flags are being proudly carried, and pictures of Donald Trump festooned on Israeli-destroyed government buildings.
Yet perennially ignorant, limited, and hardened liberals are protesting in front of the White House. Protesting what? For decades Iranian women have been deprived of their rights, forced to live under hijabs and burkas, denying their femininity and their rightful place in society. The Morality Police enforced bans on dress, expression, and behavior, and forced millions into compliance with harsh religious law, all of which has been or should be the rallying cry for regime change.
But progressives sit on their hands, weeping for the wanton destruction of brown people by the American dictator, an arrogant adventurist with only his rise to supreme power guiding his assault on world order. They see the waves of Israeli bombers over Tehran as another example of Jewish hegemony and the might of the international Jewish conspiracy. Iran was the only militant bastion against Jewish expansionism.
If there was any more proof necessary of the endemic, virulent anti-Semitism within the ranks of the American Left, it is this outcry - this hysterical claim to Iranian sovereignty despite the regime's continuous, persistent, murderous control over its people.
'War monger...jingoist, belligerent predator' progressives shout, denying the geopolitical savvy of Trump, America's long overdue entry into the Machiavellian world of Putin and Xi, the world of realpolitik, nationalism, and a fearless use of force.
For years, especially under the craven Biden years, America was still lashed to the idolatry of moral exceptionalism. America always does the right, moral, and ethical thing. We toppled the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but we respectfully declined to impose a harsh, necessary martial law on the grounds of civility and respect for democratic due process.
The results were as everyone should have expected - the rise of violent militias, turning the country into a fire zone, an ungovernable, Islamic-leaning chaos.
The Taliban in Afghanistan could have been obliterated by American airpower. Lessons should have been learned from the Soviet defeat decades before, and absolute military dominance followed by years of American occupation and martial law should have been the policy. Instead, America in the interest of human rights, respectability, and moral exceptionalism took its foot off the gas, and the Taliban are now back in power.
All this conciliatory concern, this political myopia, this ignorance of history, this 'hearts and minds' mentality, this overconcern for civilian casualties went out the window with the second election of Donald Trump. Israel was given free rein to obliterate Gaza and Hamas, remove Hezbollah from Lebanon, and to destroy the Islamic regime in Iran all with American support.
History has proven Clausewitz right again and again. The world has known only war since the first Paleolithic human settlements, and will continue to beholden to its temptations. To ignore the use of war is to deny the imperatives of history and human nature. It is an ineluctable, irrepressible feature of the human condition. Peace results only if there is military parity - the peaceful Cold War period is the prime example - or overwhelming imperial control, e.g. Pax Romana. Otherwise territory, influence, supremacy, resources, influence must be assured through the threat or use of the force of arms.
'Diplomacy...negotiations' insist Europeans who have forgotten the lesson of Neville Chamberlain and his dalliance with Hitler. 'Peace in our time' was nothing but ignorance, idealism, and distorted assumptions of human goodness.
Iran has never once in the mullahs' near fifty year regime considered negotiations. They with impunity developed a nuclear program designed to annihilate Israel, sponsored terrorism to promote radical Islam throughout the Middle East and to extend their geopolitical hegemony. They never once held their fire when citizens protested their actions.
Former President Obama concluded the worst possible 'Peace' Treaty with Iran. If Iran would promise to cease the production of military grade uranium and desist from its intentions to use its nuclear power to threaten Israel and the United States, America would eliminate all sanctions and Iran would be welcomed back into the commonwealth of nations.
Obama asked only for a ten year moratorium on the refinement of fissionable material and said nothing about state-sponsored terrorism; so the mullahs went deep underground, kept building just enough to stay ahead of international inspectors, increased its support of Hamas and Hezbollah, and emerged after ten years stronger than ever.
'Basta!' said Donald Trump and with Israel destroyed Iran's underground nuclear bunkers, and now with Israel has launched a full-scale air assault on the country itself. Policy by other means, said the American President, eliminating a world threat and a national, shameful, regime.
Like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Gaza, and Venezuela, this military response to Iran both addresses immediate social and geopolitical issues, but also sends a message to Russian and especially China - 'You're next'. No more clear statement of American resolve concerning China's avowed expansionism could be made.
Progressives, the party of appeasement, conciliation, and idealism, cannot help themselves. The wailing, breast beating and rending of garments continues while a new world order is being established.
Gone are the days of internationalism and world compromise. The United Nations is dead. Woodrow Wilson's dream of a league of nations only a footnote in history. In their place is what the world throughout human history has known - force.
This is not a setback, a retreat into xenophobic militarism; but reality of a world where the force of arms backs up policy but which in a world of either parity or empire will not be needed.
The Machiavellian triumvirate - Xi, Putin, and Trump - are at the core of this new world order, all understanding the need for military power and not hesitant to use it. Yet the world, with the exception of a few holdouts - the European and American Left - understands this quite clearly. Competition is hardwired, innate, indissoluble, and permanent and only through an understanding of countervailing power can it both assure progress and encourage parity.
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