It’s about 47 years of accumulated pain. By Ali Ansari in The Australian.
To paraphrase Trump, it’s about 47 years of accumulated pain. Over the past year, the Islamic Republic has found itself confronted by a US with a grievance to match its own, and with a growing political will to do something about it.
Moreover, in Trump the regime’s leaders were disturbed to find someone with about as much respect for the international rules-based order as they had. For Iran’s people, who have been at the sharp end of the Islamic Republic’s disdain for rules and rights of any nature, Trump’s approach seemed refreshing. This is why, to the apparent bewilderment of some commentators, many Iranians in Iran were thrilled by the US attack.
Gerard Baker in The Australian:
From its outset in 1979, the Islamic Republic has made murdering Americans among its highest priorities. From the more than 200 Marines killed by Hezbollah in the 1983 Beirut bombing and the 600 or so American service members killed by Iran-backed militias in Iraq to the many US citizens terrorised, captured and killed by Hamas and other Iranian-sponsored entities in Gaza and around the world, Tehran has repeatedly bathed in American blood.
Under the principle of self-defence, action taken against a regime that has killed so many of our own citizens is legitimate, not simply for retributive justice, but to prevent further killings. It would have been preferable if Mr Trump had spent more time in the past few weeks explaining that case to the American people and, ideally, securing a political mandate from congress for it. But the failure to do so doesn’t make the cause an illegitimate one.
Here’s a big list of terrorist attacks and military actions against US Persons carried out by Iran and Iranian-backed terrorist groups since 1979.
Only George HW Bush’s war to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991 can be counted as a clear success, and then only because its objective was tightly circumscribed. Ronald Reagan’s effort to stabilise Lebanon in the early 1980s ended in the bombing of the Beirut Marine barracks, while his later efforts to extricate US hostages resulted in the self-inflicted wound of Iran-Contra, and George W. Bush’s war with Iraq in 2003 cost intolerable loss of life and untold damage to America’s strategic capabilities and stature.
Democratic presidents’ less ambitious efforts have fared no better. Bill Clinton’s standoff bombing campaign failed to arrest the rise of al-Qa’ida and led more or less directly to the September 11 attacks; Barack Obama “led from behind”, unleashing chaos in Libya, and permitted Syria to cross his chemical weapons red line. Joe Biden’s catastrophic exit from Afghanistan (part of the Greater Middle East for these purposes) was a humiliation.
Kurt Schlicter:
I reject any allegedly right-coded ideology that requires that we allow seventh century Third World savages to murder our people and not pay for it.
There is no expiration date for righteous retribution.
If you believe that seventh century Third World savages can murder our people and not pay for it, then we are not the same.
It’s the Arab way of war. Surprise attacks, needling, attacks calibrated not to draw a full-blooded response, outbreed and out-fanatic the non-Muslims. Given how Islam has 2 billion people, you have to respect the methodology — it works in the long run.
