Just as with Vietnam, the two Gulf Wars, and the Iraq invasion, opposition to a war with Iran has already switched on the shrieking of prominent people demanding that patriotism requires goose-stepping in cadence with the aggressive and tactically moronic actions of the squatter in the Oval Office.
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For instance, there’s former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who seemed to be trying to boost her reputation by bailing out of the Trump regime but has now decided to back Trump 100% in this matter, insinuating anybody who doesn’t is unAmerican.
"You don't see anyone standing up for Iran," Haley said on “Hannity” Monday. "You're not hearing any of the Gulf members [states], you're not hearing China, you're not hearing Russia. The only ones that are mourning the loss of Soleimani are Democrat leadership and our Democrat presidential candidates."
This claim about Democratic mourning is a flat-out lie, of course. Haley then had the gall to go on to say that foreign policy differences should stop at the water’s edge, the 80-year-old motto of Republican Sen. Arthur Vandenburg that modern Republicans, including her, violated repeatedly when President Obama was president. But everybody should stand behind Trump over the Soleimani assassination, she asserts.
Former Sen. and former Democrat Joe Lieberman spouted the same kind of nonsense in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal:
“If enough voters decide that Democrats can’t be trusted to keep America safe, Mr. Trump won’t have much trouble winning a second term in November. [...] In their uniformly skeptical or negative reactions to Soleimani’s death, Democrats are falling well below Vandenberg’s standard and, I fear, creating the risk that the U.S. will be seen as acting and speaking with less authority abroad at this important time.”
And then there was Rep. Mark Meadows:
Philip Bump at The Washington Post noted Tuesday:
Trump's campaign has been slightly more direct. In an email sent to supporters on Sunday, a joint fundraising committee for the campaign and the Republican Party wrote above Trump's name that “Soleimani was a monster responsible for THOUSANDS of American deaths, and the world is a better place without him in it.” However, the email continued, “radical Democrats like Elizabeth Warren, Ilhan Omar, and Bernie Sanders are busy criticizing me for eliminating a deadly terrorist.”
The conflation here is the same as the one used by Haley, though with a less direct implication: Criticizing Trump’s decision to strike Soleimani is necessarily a defense of Soleimani himself. It’s an ironic position for Trump to take, given that he has repeatedly criticized the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 — a decision that resulted in the death of Saddam Hussein. In that case, Trump separates the outcome from the process but, here, overlaps them to his own political benefit.
And Ted Cruz weighed in Tuesday night on Foxaganda:
That’s not quite calling Obama a traitor, but it sure comes close. As for Obama giving the Iranians $100 million, how many times does that claim have to be debunked before Republicans stop tweeting it? It was Iranian frozen assets.
Trump violates multiple provisions of the Constitution, but we’re the traitors. He launches an illegal preventive war and we’re the traitors. He threatens to commit war crimes and we’re the traitors. Expect a whole lot more of this if Iran and the U.S. don’t pull back from the precipice.