Death from the Baghdad Skies

Much excitement about America’s air strike that killed Iranian general Soleimani. While some applaud Trump for his decisiveness, many are talking about him risking “World War 3.” The emotions are high. A recent Fox News panel devolved into a shouting match.

Time and future Iranian actions will tell, but from my knowledge of Islam and the Middle East, I think this dramatic response to the Baghdad embassy siege was the right approach.

There is something the Christian West seems generally incapable of understanding about the Muslim world. Jesus’s advice to “turn the other check” and respond to anger with love is peculiarly Christian. Islam’s prophet was an emperor and conqueror. Accordingly, if an adversary responds meekly and with moderation, that does not, in the Muslim mind, give them any moral authority. It is not going to inspire the Muslim to do likewise.

Instead, it looks like either an admission of weakness, or an admission that they, the adversary, are in the moral wrong.

God is on the side of the big battalions; the big battalions are on the side of God.

Responding mildly is the path more likely to lead to more and stronger attacks.

The same dynamic explains why the Middle East seems to require authoritarian governments, and their removal in several countries over the “Arab Spring,” and by the US in Iraq, has only led to chaos. A more relaxed and moderate approach will impress no one; it is an admission of immorality or incapacity. Moderation in the defense of virtue, after all, is no virtue; extremism in opposition to vice is no vice.

I expect the strike at Baghdad airport to cause the Iranian regime to pull in their horns.

If it does not, if they do not, if this escalates, the big loser will be Joe Biden. The big winners will be Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard has positioned herself as the peace candidate; this gives her relevance. Biden is vulnerable for having supported the Iraq War—he is no peace candidate. The war vote, conversely, automatically coalesces around the Commander-in-Chief.

Meanwhile, in Iran, the mullahs are already in trouble domestically for their adventurism abroad. It is suicidal for them to escalate this. They cannot afford it. If, on the other hand, they respond meekly, they face the same problem: it is an admission of either incapacity or moral fault. Trump has them over a barrel.