After the strike on Qassem Suleimani, there are now two competing points of view on it: Either it was a bad call by President Trump and now we’re screwed, or it was a good call by Trump and he deserves unconditional support moving forward.
How about a third view: The decision was necessary, and we don’t know yet if we’re screwed.
The U.S. couldn’t sit back and absorb the Iran-backed attack on our embassy in Iraq, which was only the latest in a series of escalations and provocations from the frustrating, stubborn, and petulant regime in Tehran.
The Trump administration had to respond, and it had to send a message that this isn’t a game.
And yet it’s also true that there are certainly going to be further consequences of our own retaliation, justified and appropriate as it was.
Iran, like nearly every other country in the Middle East, has almost nothing going for it and therefore has little to lose in continuing its wild aggression. That region is and probably always will be hopeless because they seem to like it that way.
In the likely event, then, of an attack on American interests from Iran, we will again have no choice but to respond. We can’t know right now how we will do that or whether retaliation would at least stall Iran’s hostilities.
We don’t know yet if we’re screwed.
There are a lot of people, particularly in establishment Washington and the national media, who enjoy conflict overseas. But Trump isn’t supposed to be that guy. He explicitly campaigned on not being that guy.
But depending on what happens next — we don’t know! — he may have to be.
We don’t know yet if we’re screwed.
