Obviously, that hasn’t come to pass. There’s little doubt that congressional Democrats who’ve attacked Trump’s every move in this Iran war would be praising a Democrat president who had the foresight and courage to do so on his watch. None did, but if one had, most patriotic Republicans would have surely cheered him on. As for the dominant liberal media, the negative spin in their news stories and commentary about the war have been blatantly dishonest about this overwhelmingly successful campaign. From the very start of the war the stock market plunged, crude oil prices and gasoline at the pump spiked, and an uptick in the CPI signaled price inflation. This was to be expected. The market hates shocks and uncertainty and is very short-sighted. But this war is for long-term security. Stock prices have already recovered, and gas is up less than a buck-a-gallon, that’s still lower than it was during Bidenflation. This isn’t a large-scale war and not likely to last very long. Sacrifices to consumers will be trivial compared to WW II when rationing stamps were issued to all Americans for four long years limiting meat, butter, dairy, coffee, gasoline, coal, tires, cars, shoes, nylon, paper, metal products, and much more. Public opinion polls casting this as an “unpopular war,” are foolishly simplistic and the disapproval percentage is misleadingly skewed by the mass of knee-jerk Democrats who oppose anything associated with Trump. Wars, by their nature, are unpleasant. The small number of U.S. military casualties has been, thankfully, astonishing. (Compare it to the hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides in the Russian war against Ukraine.) To be sure, this war is far less popular with the ayatollahs on the receiving end. The essential justification for the war is the necessity of it if you can imagine the horrors of nuclear weapons in the hands of the fanatical ayatollahs were they to be launched at their hated “infidels” (that’s all the rest of us). In 1960 during the Cold War, Nikita Krushchev, Chairman of the Communist Party and head of the Soviet Union, spoke at an international conference at the United Nations building in New York. At one point, in a fit of rage (or performance) he took off a shoe and pounded it repeatedly on the desk in front of him, shouting, “We will bury you!” Most people misunderstood his meaning. He was just spewing Marxist ideological dogma that communism would replace capitalism when the workers of the world inevitably rise up in revolution. The Soviets had nukes, but Khrushchev understood that a first strike would be suicidal, triggering an instant nuclear retaliation by the West. Unlike Iran’s ayatollahs, Soviet communists weren’t religious fanatics (they weren’t religious at all; they were atheists). The Cold War nuclear standoff was a stalemate known as “mutual assured destruction” that not only deterred a nuclear war but also a conventional war between the Soviets and NATO in Europe. It’s true that, strategically, Iran’s ayatollahs want nukes as a similar deterrent to protect their regime, just as they used the Strait of Hormuz shutdown to force a ceasefire in this war. But the ayatollahs, as religious fanatics, can be suicidal. If they had nukes, when the inevitable overthrow of their theocracy was imminent, they could joyously launch their nuclear missiles at the infidels to reap their reward in Islamic Heaven. Trump’s recent announcement that Iran accepted his “deal” and met his demands, including opening the Strait and surrendering their enriched uranium, appears to have been premature. The ayatollahs are not known for keeping their promises. If they ultimately do, that’ll be a win for us and the world. If regime change follows, that will be a crowning achievement, especially for most of the Iranians who detest the ruling ayatollahs’ government. Trump-hating congressional Democrats and their media echo chamber, blinded by TDS, scoffed at Trump’s proclaimed good news absurdly stating that, even if true, this expensive war accomplished nothing. To back that argument up, one media wag exclaimed, “The Strait was open before the war; now it’s open again, nothing’s changed.” So much for partisanship ending at the waters’ edge. Mike Rosen is a Denver-based American radio personality and political commentator.
