Settling the score with Iran

From taking 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, working with terror groups to kill over five hundred American soldiers; providing munitions and financial support to terror groups and Taliban insurgents in their fight against American forces; taking American tourists, missionaries, and public aid workers hostage; and harassing American vessels in the Persian Gulf to condemning the United States weekly, the theocratic dictatorship which calls itself the Islamic Republic of Iran has behaved as if it were at war with the United States since November 1979. By contrast, the United States has denied the existence of that war and, in recent years, has aided in the funding of that war and the great expanse of that regime’s hegemony over the region.

President Obama has been complicit with Iran, aiding and abetting its acts against American interests, its financing of radical Islamic terror, and its expansion of hegemony over the Middle East. By releasing $1.7 billion to that state sponsor of terror, by removing every real obstacle to Iran developing nuclear weapons, and by refusing to strike back against Iranian acts of provocation against the American military, the Obama Administration has gone far beyond feckless weakness to making itself in fact (and so viewed by countries in the region) as Iran’s greatest financial supporter and facilitator. Iran is now the most powerful enemy of our country in the region, and that is in no small measure due to the Obama Administration’s complicity in that rise. The record could not be more shameful or more powerfully contrary to the interests of the United States. It is as if the prospective victim of violent crime not only gave the person intent on committing the crime a gun but also paid for bullets to be used in the gun and even aided the criminal in loading the weapon.

If we are honest with ourselves and if we intend to rebuild American power and prestige in the world, restoring America to the role of a bastion in defense of American liberty and free enterprise, we must settle this score with Iran. Doing so requires the use of overwhelming force against the regime in power and its burgeoning regional military in response to Iranian actions that threaten the United States, its military, and its citizens. Failing to do so will lead to ever greater actions against us, to an increasingly emboldened enemy that despises us as “infidels.”

Rather than tolerate threats by Iranian vessels against American ships of war in the Gulf, we ought to sink those vessels, every time. Rather than endeavor, painfully, to explain away the humiliation of American soldiers taken captive by Iran, we should retaliate by obliterating the Iranian naval installations where the men were held hostage. Rather than ignore Iran’s financing of terror against American forces, we should be broadcasting the fact of it and hunting down and killing their commanders who are training and aiding terrorists (even in Iran itself). Rather than tolerate Iran’s use of the internet to promote propaganda against the United States, we should be using cyber warfare to block their communication and fry their servers. Rather than alienate Israel and restrain its efforts to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapon capabilities, short range ballistic missiles, and missile defense systems, we should be giving full and direct support to Israeli efforts to destroy those capabilities, missiles, and defenses.

And if Iran again, as it undoubtedly will, takes Americans lives and property, we ought to follow Thomas Jefferson’s response to hostage holding and ransom demands by the Barbary Pirates. We should respond swiftly, with overwhelming force, and obliterate that enemy.

Increasingly, due to the fecklessness of Barack Obama, America is perceived by its most ardent enemies (Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China) as weak, vacillating, and incapable of protecting its own vital interests. That reputation leads to acts of provocation, acts which escalate over time because they have not been repulsed with ferocity.

A true commander-in-chief explains frankly who our enemies are, works to diminish their ability to cause America harm, and strikes powerfully against those who act against American life, liberty, and property. Obama, by contrast, embraces America’s enemies as friends, ignores actions by those enemies to harm American interests, and routinely fails to strike back completely against those who take American life, liberty, and property. Iran is a classic example of Obama’s disaffection from America, whereby he favors America’s enemies over America’s friends and America itself. In a time of war, such actions are treasonous. In a time of peace, such despicable actions are a betrayal of the public trust imposed in the President, of his oath of office, and of the nation itself.