It’s in Islam’s nature. By John Lucas, who starts with the well known fable of the scorpion and the frog.

The scorpion replied, “I can’t help it. It’s in my nature.”

And so it is with the governing Iranians. The holy war of jihad is in their nature. “Death to America!” is not just a meaningless slogan to keep the masses happy. It is their strategy and purpose. They are determined to conduct jihad against the United States, Israel, and Western Civilizaion to achieve their religious dream of a worldwide caliphate. Their nature is to act to accomplish this by whatever means they can.

All indications are that President Trump thinks he can change their nature. He seeks to purge the hatred and devotion to jihad from their nature. He tries to play the negotiator’s “good cop, bad cop” routine by first threatening to destroy them and then offering them the carrot of prosperity and wealth via economic development.

But it is ironic that while Trump is simultaneously playing the dual roles of both the good cop and the bad cop, he apparently is oblivious that the same tactics are being employed against him by the “good cop” negotiators (who he says are “rational, smart and strong”) and the “bad cop” IRGC (“Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards or you’ll be living in Hell.”) …

I have lost count of the number of times that Trump has announced a cease-fire because the “good cop” Iranians supposedly were “desperate” to negotiate. Inevitably, however, these optimistic announcements are followed almost immediately by further Iranian attacks and escalation, which, of course, are the work of the “bad cop” IRGC. And now it is happening again. Trump is, I respectfully submit, being played.

Any deal will only be temporary:

The current decision makers in Iran are not going to make “deal,” at least not one that is meaningful and that will last. Even if they suffer a military defeat, it will not change their nature or their goal of expanding the caliphate.

The Islamists have been at this for well over a thousand years. Their attempted expansion from Spain into northern Europe was turned back when Charles “The Hammer” Martel defeated them in the year 732 at the battle of Tours in modern day France between Tours and Poitiers. And Islamists had been at war with the western world for at least a hundred years before that. But that defeat obviously did not defeat their desire to expand the caliphate, which still drives them today. Abandoning their religious and imperialistic goals is not in their nature. They are not going to change their nature by abandoning their fundamental religious beliefs and objectives. …

 

 

I will leave you for now with General of the Armies Douglas MacArthur’s simple but powerful “Message from the Far East,” which he sent to the West Point Corps of Cadets in 1949:

“From the Far East I send you one single thought, one sole idea — written in red on every beachhead from Australia to Tokyo — There is no substitute for victory.”

The Iranian cancer will be excised by victory, not by a “deal.” But, like Charles Martel’s crushing victory at Tours almost thirteen hundred years ago, a military defeat, even of the magnitude threatened by Trump will not change their nature. History tells us that any victory will be temporary, at best.