The same NY Times which was never particularly concerned with Obama’s use of force against Islamic jihadis throughout the Eastern world nor in Libya is Very Concerned with Trump ordering a strike against an Iranian responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans
Congress, Stop President Trump’s Rush to War With Iran
President Trump must doubt his administration’s own claims that it has deterred Iranian threats.
“Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets,†Mr. Trump tweeted on Saturday, “we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!â€
The threat came after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, vowed “forceful revenge†for an American drone strike early Friday that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, a top Iranian military commander, after, the White House claims, the general prepared attacks on American interests.
Why was Mr. Trump’s threat on Twitter even necessary? Wasn’t the death of General Suleimani supposed to have stopped the threats the president now claims America still faces? Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, defended the attack on Friday by saying, “It was time to take this action so that we could disrupt this plot, deter further aggression from Qassim Suleimani and the Iranian regime, as well as to attempt to de-escalate the situation.â€
If you’re guessing that the piece is all about slamming President Trump and not Iran for their actions against Americans, you’d be correct.
What’s even more troubling is that the administration is not seeking sensible advice elsewhere. It didn’t notify leaders from either party in Congress before the drone strike, although on Saturday the White House did notify at least some senior leaders, as required by the War Powers Act.
The Executive Office doesn’t need to notify anyone in the Legislative Branch prior to action: it’s called the Constitution. Look it up. But, the Times Editorial Board really, really wants legislation passed that would limit Trump’s march to war. And to protect Iran. Meanwhile, they run an opinion piece by Azadeh Moaveni, who is a senior gender analyst with the International Crisis Group, whatever that means. Oh, it should be noted that the International Crisis Group is yet another group funded by George Soros, and has consistently taken the side of Islamist groups, Palestinians, Iran, and been against American and Israel
Mourning Is Iran’s First Act of Retaliation
The last time I wrote seriously about a war with Iran was in 2012. It had been an especially fraught year, with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards running naval exercises in the Persian Gulf, Israel and the United States conducting joint drills, and the safety of oil shipping lanes looking entirely unassured. Oil prices rattled skittishly, everyone suddenly monitored ships, and headlines speculated that Israel might attack Iran’s nuclear sites.
My assignment was to consider “the day after†— to imagine how Iranians would react if their country was bombed by Israel. My piece featured scenes of distraught young people gathering on crowded intersections singing the national anthem — suddenly everyone a terrified Iranian citizen rather than an aspiring guitarist or a day laborer or whatever they were the day before — and a screaming mother buying formula to stockpile from a supermarket. I don’t even remember writing it. How many times can you write, predict and analyze your country’s destruction before your mind begins to dissolve the traces?
“Her country” seems to be Iran, even though her parents escaped from it during the 1979 revolution, with the U.S. taking them in. Her writing seems to suggest that Israel is always the bad guy. She goes on to paint the U.S. as the bad guy since the U.S. back coup in 1953. She also seems happy that Iran started retaliating in the 1980’s.
Many consider [General Suleimani] responsible for the deaths of thousands, for his intervention in salvaging Bashar al-Assad’s rule in Syria. But to many Iranians, Iraqis, Kurds and others, he was a pivotal figure in vanquishing the Islamic State, helping repel its rapid march across Iraq in 2014. In Syria, for the many Syrians who endured the industrial-scale brutality of the Assad regime, the general led what could only be understood as an offensive force. But Iran’s leaders always reminded their people that Syria, the lone Arab country that sided with Iran during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, could not be abandoned, that without it, Iran would be vastly more vulnerable in the region.
It is for these maneuvers, in part to provide Iran some deterrence against relentless American hostility, that General Suleimani is remembered. He had become a patriarch for an ambivalent country adrift, forgiven, at least by the hundreds of thousands who turned out for his funeral, for the hard excesses of the force he commanded because he secured the land in a time of the Islamic State’s butchery, seen as a man of honor and merit among political contemporaries who were usually neither. (Of course, he certainly did not impress all Iranians in this way; he had detractors who did not support his regional stratagems.)
This is what you get when a media outlet, one of the biggest in the world, is so deranged over President Trump that they have an Iranian regime apologist run an opinion piece saying how great a guy who killed hundreds of Americans is.
I remember as a child, during the years of war with Iraq, my mother telling me about relatives in Iran who gave away their jewelry to aid the war effort. This time, in the face of President Trump’s tweets threatening to attack Iran and destroy its sites of cultural heritage, I needn’t conjure the unity that comes the day after. The country has gathered to mourn. It is already here.
If she loves Iran so much she should move there. And the NY Times has just become a mouthpiece for Iran.
