"Someday, the world will stand back and applaud Trump for his canny and farseeing statesmanship."

In American Greatness, Roger Kimball writes in part,

The disaster of Flight 752 took place in the context of the liquidation of the terrorist mass-murderer Qasem Soleimani last week by the United States on the order of President Donald Trump. But that courageous and far-seeing act itself took place in the context of Iran’s decades-long assault on American and, more broadly, on Western institutions that promote a culture of tolerance and religious freedom.

The fact that many U.S. news outlets and Democratic politicians instantly coalesced around Soleimani as a “revered” military leader tells us what great inroads Stockholm Syndrome has made among American elites. Hence references to Soleimani as “General Soleimani” in headlines and such, and hence the video-clips on endless loop supposedly showing a nation in mourning over the loss of a beloved leader and “martyr.” One New York Times reporter really went to town, comparing Soleimani’s death to that of Martin Luther King, Jr.

All that is part of the anti-Trump static that is the background noise of life in the elite redoubts of the United States circa 2020. The real story in Iran, however, is revealed not by the manufactured spectacles of grief and mourning for a man who had terrorized the Iranians who had protested against the atavistic theocratic regime but the scenes of protest breaking out all over Tehran and elsewhere in response to the destruction of Flight 752 and, not incidentally, in response to the brutal, bloody, and jihad-obsessed mandarins who have held Iran in their clammy grip since the malignant absurdity of Ayatollah Khomeini. We’re all used to the Iranian chants of “Death to America.” What we’re hearing now, however, are chants of “Death to the regime after all these years of crimes.”

Last week, Donald Trump eliminated one of Iran’s most potent emissaries of death and destruction. All the beautiful people huddled together and wailed that Trump had just “destabilized” the Middle East (had it been stable beforehand?), that his “unilateral” action was illegal, counterproductive, immature, that, ultimately, he may have started World War III.

That was then. Now it looks as though he may have sparked the great unraveling of theocratic totalitarian control in Iran. And this just in: the Iranians apparently have just arrested the British ambassador. Arrested. In civilized countries, if there is an issue with a diplomat, one expels him. In civilized countries. But this is the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Someday, the world will stand back and applaud Trump for his canny and farseeing statesmanship. I do not assert that that recognition is coming any time soon. But come it will.

Many of those who most bitterly attacked Ronald Reagan back when he was helping to precipitate the demise of the Soviet Union now sing his praises. I predict that, sooner or later, such people and their heirs will be singing the praises of Donald Trump, too.

Unfortunately, the oblivion that wraps historical and political stupidity in blinking impunity will also extract any toll of responsibility from those future cheerleaders who denounce Donald Trump today. It is all part of the human comedy, distracting, amusing even, when approached with sufficient cynicism. It is not, however, agreeable or edifying.

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