The giant hole in Dems’ criticism of Trump’s attack on Qassem Soleimani
By Michael Goodwin
NYPost.com
When it comes to Iran, the Democrats who want to be president are full of sound and fury. They are certain President Trump has brought us to the brink of war and demand answers about the imminent threat of attack the administration cited.
But if you ignore the noise and focus on their actual words, you notice a giant hole in the criticism. The leading Dems are not arguing that Trump was wrong to drone Qassem Soleimani, nor have they said flatly they would not have approved the mission.
Their sound and fury, then, amounts to empty screeching and nothing else.
Even Joe Biden, who gave a 20-minute speech in New York Tuesday, was blistering in his attacks on Trump, but stopped well short of faulting the targeting of Soleimani. The big demands of the former veep, who is running on his long experience with foreign policy, were that the president rejoin the Iranian nuclear deal — fat chance — and “explain what you’re doing.”
Similarly, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who had to be pushed in a TV interview to admit that Soleimani was a terrorist, said killing him was “incendiary” but did not claim she would have refused to do the same.
It was left to Michael Bloomberg to underscore the point his fellow candidates were slyly refusing to make. The former New York mayor said it was “outrageous” for Sen. Bernie Sanders to call the strike an “assassination,” then added:
Hard to know which body is held in lower esteem, the Congress or the media. But for a long time the media thought they were invincible, based largely on their success after forming the JournOlist in 2007—a cabal of 400 leftists who vowed to destroy anyone who said a single bad word about the poseur “president” Barack Obama.
“This is a guy who had an awful amount of American blood on his hands. Nobody that I know of would think that we did something wrong in getting the general.”
Bravo for Bloomberg for daring to say the simple truth. His opponents should be ashamed of themselves.
In many ways, Trump’s decision on Soleimani and the timid reaction from the gaggle of Dem candidates highlights the difficulties of unseating a bold, activist president. Whatever you think of Trump, nobody ever said he’s an idle seat warmer.
Whether it’s confronting China and other nations over job-killing trade deals, cutting taxes and regulations or just being vocal on several major topics nearly every day, the president doesn’t hide from the nation’s problems. You know where he stands, sometimes to a fault.
Indeed, a major reason why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi jumped into the impeachment camp was that the relentless economic expansion and historic low unemployment rates gave Trump critics scarce safe spaces.
The Dems’ dilemma was best captured by the unforgettable words of Texas Rep. Al Green: “I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach this president, he will get re-elected.”
So far, the Soleimani episode incorporates those complications and adds others for the candidates seeking the nomination. To start with, none of the top-tier Dems is popular enough that he or she can adopt a peace-at-any-price approach in a post-9/11 world.
While some of the radical backbenchers fall into that camp, including Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, there is no significant constituency for unilateral disarmament. Sidelined kneeler Colin Kaepernick made the peacenik position permanently toxic by declaring that “there is nothing new about American terrorist attacks against black and brown people for the expansion of American imperialism.”
Moreover, it’s not as if recent presidents haven’t tested the limits of shrinking America’s military footprint. Barack Obama tried to disengage from Iraq and got the creation of ISIS as a result. Trump wants desperately to bring our troops home from Syria, but the slaughter of our Kurdish allies by Turkey intervened.
The Biden speech illuminated the limits the candidates face. His team sensed the moment provided an opening for him to exploit and prepared an address to underscore his experience and separate him from the pack.
Nice try, but no sale. For one thing, the impromptu circumstances left something to be desired. There was no audience, save the predictable American-flag backdrop, and Biden read his remarks from teleprompters in a monotone.
Politico reports that he first had a fundraiser at the Skadden Arps law firm, where he twice confused Iraq with Iran. He made the same mistake in the speech.
The flubs recall concerns about his mental state. And it’s impossible to forget former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ observation that Biden has been wrong about nearly every major foreign policy issue for four decades.
As for the content of the speech, the kindest thing that can be said was that it was unimpressive. Biden’s attacks on Trump were predictable, as was his praise for Obama’s Iranian nuke deal.
Yet few people outside Obama dead-enders believe the deal’s terms were adequate, and there is little doubt that the money Obama gave Iran and his lifting of sanctions fueled Soleimani’s expanded terrorist aggression.
Most oddly, Biden faulted Trump for not responding when Iran shot down one of our drones last June, saying it fed “Iran’s sense of impunity.” In truth, Iran’s sense of impunity was something Trump inherited from the Obama-Biden administration, and taking down Soleimani made the point that the game was over.
That, of course, is the ultimate distinction between Trump and the top Dems. While none dares say he was wrong, it’s fairly obvious that, if any of them were in the Oval Office, Soleimani would still be alive.
Chalk that up as something else they are afraid to admit.
Nancy woes? Oh, bray tell!
Reader Tom Cunningham offers a reflection on impeachment, writing: “A donkey is another name for a jackass and an elephant never forgets. I pray for Nancy.”
We’re ‘left’ with a bail fiasco
It’s not much consolation, but the growing recognition that the “reforms” of New York’s new bail law need reforms of their own are instructive of the way Albany works — and doesn’t.
The initial change, which bars judges from requiring suspects to post bail over misdemeanor charges, passed as part of the enormous budget bill. Although the prosecutors’ association opposed it, there was essentially no public debate on the content or how the changes would work.
The second observation is that there was no big public opposition because Democrats control the governor’s office and both houses of the Legislature. The GOP has been reduced to a spectator.
In that sense, the bad law wasn’t a mistake. It’s exactly the sort of thing many far-lefties campaigned on in 2018. They said much of society, law enforcement and the courts are just a racist racket and almost nobody belongs in jail.
Behold the disastrous results — and this is just the beginning.
Until lawmakers admit they were fundamentally wrong, any fixes will be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Majority rules, majority fools
Timely history.
Democrat Adlai Stevenson, in one of his three presidential campaigns, was approached by a woman after a speech. “You’ll certainly get the vote of thinking persons,” she told him.
He replied: “But madam, I need a majority.”