While Democrats rage against the American/Israel war on Iran, the PEOPLE celebrate
Without doubt there remain great risks and real constitutional issues involved the present military campaign by both the United States and Israel to destroy the Islamic leadership in Iran. First, it is almost impossible to force a change in power solely by air power. This has been tried numerous times, with little success. Killing the leaders of this terrorist Iranian government is a positive step, but it remains entirely unclear whether this war can produce a better government there.
Second, as much as there might be legal precedents that allow President Trump to initiate this action without direct congressional approval, it continues a dangerous trend ceding power away from Congress and to the presidency, in direct opposition to the intentions of the Founding Fathers in their writing of the Constitution. They very much were opposed to giving any president the power to start a war unilaterally.
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Having stated the reasonable objections to this military action, however, we must now take a look at the two images to the right to see its immediate and very positive consequences. Both pictures are from videos of very spontaneous demonstrations on February 28, 2026 by Iranian refugees celebrating the American/Israeli attacks against Iran.
The top picture is a screen capture from a demonstration in Georgetown, DC. The bottom picture is a screen capture from a demonstration in Austin, Texas.
Note the flags in both pictures. There are numerous flags of Iran (the version during the Shah’s rule, not the version from the Islamic Revolution). There are many American flags, of course, since these demonstrations are in America.
What is most revealing however are the Israeli flags, being enthusiastically waved by Iranians. Clearly the decades of hate against Israel and Jews by the mullahs in Iran has not had any impact on these Iranian refugees. In fact, in the video of the bottom picture they are chanting “Thank you, Bibi!”, referring to Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu as the camera pans across the crowd.
Moreover, these demonstrations took place in two Democratic Party strongholds, cities where pro-Hamas demonstrations have been routine, including rioting and violence against Jews and anyone who dared suggest Israel’s actions in Gaza might be justified.
Nor are these two demonstrations an exception. They have been the rule across the United States and Europe, as well as in Iran itself. The public — the ordinary people for whom governments are meant to serve — seem very much in favor of what President Trump and Netanyahu are doing in Iran. And they are expressing that support of both America and Israel quite unequivocally. If this doesn’t indicate to the world that Israel and the rest of the Middle East can live together in peace and mutual cooperation, nothing can.
This conclusion is further supported by the response by almost every Arab nation in the Middle East, most of whom started off quite willing to let the U.S. and Israel do this deed, with no opposition or with covert support. Now, because of Iran’s indiscriminate attacks on Arab nations, they have all publicly joined the war, allying themselves not with the Islamic nation of Iran but with the U.S. and Israel.
I would not be surprised if Saudi Arabia soon signs the Abraham Accords. Nor would I be surprised if most of the last remaining Arab nations that have not yet done so join Saudi Arabia.
We could very well be seeing a major realignment of alliances in the Middle East that could really really harbinger the beginnings of real peace in that region. Imagine: Israel at peace with all its neighbors, because the Arabs have finally recognized that it is to their own best interest to do so as well.
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According to numerous sources, one person who is *not* cheering is the UK’s Keir Starmer, who apparently has more love for the Islamic fundamentalists — and their form of despotic authoritarian government — than he does for America or even his own British constituents.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/donald-trump-air-strikes-iran-british-bases-keir-starmer-b1273084.html
https://thehill.com/policy/international/5763049-starmer-breaks-trump-iran-strikes/
Still stranger, it has recently come to light Mr. Starmer is himself Jewish, even though his loyalties appear to lie exclusively with Muslim fundamentalists, whether they are members of immigrant rape gangs in his country or those individuals still clinging to power in Tehran.
https://www.facebook.com/Labourheartlands/videos/keir-starmer-confirms-he-is-jewish-and-says-he-has-family-in-israel-fair-enough-/2012558792616968/
At least we now know who our friends are.
The Iranian people have also now seen that regime that has been in power for the last 47 years is, in fact, vulnerable and capable of defeat.
We can only hope and pray that they will come together to establish a peaceful representative government to fill the void.
“If this doesn’t indicate to the world that Israel and the rest of the Middle East can live together in peace and mutual cooperation, nothing can.”
I think we’ve seen some real evidence right in the region itself that much of the Middle East *can* live together in peace with Israel. But I can’t see the Palestinians, in aggregate, embracing that possibility — certainly not in the lifetime of anyone now alive.
American air power was decisive in toppling Kaddafi in Libya. Of course, it was armed militias that were able to finish the deed. Unless arms and a modicum of training are provided to amenable groups in Iran, I don’t know how the IRGC can be swept from power on the ground.
All it seems you have to do is call a meeting of all your top people to discuss a US/Israel “proposal” in one place and then be bombed to oblivion to show how weak a country is. The world at large is not seeing this as a good thing.
Dave Johnson: My impression from looking at a large number of news sources, not just the propaganda press, is that the overall world is reacting very positively to everything the US and Israel are doing. Not only the general public is mostly enthused by the elimination of these thugs, but so are most of the leaders of the Middle East. On top of that, some squishy leaders in Europe, after initially being hostile, have shifted their opinions. And those in Europe who haven’t aren’t worth listening to.
Richard M,
Once Israel completes the extermination of the “3-H Club” (Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis), the “Palestinians” can either get with the program or – my preference – be forcibly removed from Gaza and the West Bank and dumped into Syria where they can rely on the non-existent charity of their “Arab brothers.”
Clark,
I suspect quite a bit of the IRGC has already been swept not only from power but from existence by US/Israeli airstrikes/missile attacks. Their bases are certainly high-priority targets. The US will want to minimize any potential local pushback when it puts boots on the ground – temporarily – to complete the destruction of Iranian nuclear infrastructure and the confiscation of fissionables. If handing out M-16s and M-4s to local anti-regime militias can materially assist such activities, I have no doubt it will be done.
Honestly, I don’t think Libya is a the sort of outcome that we want to see repeated in Iran!
Death to the IRGC.
Hello Milt,
The problem with Sir Keir Starmer is….well, there’s multiple problems. The first is, yes, he’s ideologically boxed in because Labour is now highly dependent on the Muslim vote, and he just saw most of it flee to the Green Party in a disastrous by-election in what was until now Labour’s sixth safest seat. (As it stands now he’ll likely be turfed out by party rebels by summer, and he knows it.)
But the other problem is also systemic: He’s just not that bright, and neither is anyone around him. This makes inaction his default posture. The falloff in native intelligence and knowledge from even just a generation ago is profound — Starmer’s crew makes Blair’s first government look like Lord Salisbury’s cabinet, which is saying something. It’s part of the general catastrophic decay of the British political class, and that includes the senior civil service. Dominic Cummings observed not long ago that people outside government often imagine that Downing Street has a “quiet calm centre, like in a James Bond movie, where you open the door and that is where the ninjas are who actually know what they are doing”. But in reality, “There are no ninjas. There is no door”.
Which is one more reason why the Labour and Conservative Parties are on their last legs. In the mean time, all Donald Trump can do is just ignore the British government as best he can. It can’t help him much, and it can’t hinder him much.
Not sure how this is America first, or not starting more forever wars…
But I 100% support the “removal” of a regime whom has killed 10’s of thousands of protestors. (Probably, maybe, who the hell can trust any of the news coming out of worldwide media these days? They definitely killed some!)
I feel for the families of the killed US soldiers.
Finish the job .mil!
Make their sacrifices mean something.
Hello Dick,
“Once Israel completes the extermination of the “3-H Club” (Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis), the “Palestinians” can either get with the program or – my preference – be forcibly removed from Gaza and the West Bank and dumped into Syria where they can rely on the non-existent charity of their “Arab brothers.””
It’s not for me to say what should happen there. But I think we all know, deep down, that if there weren’t any international rules based order and major outside powers enforcing it in the Middle East . . . that is, if the people of the Levant were left to their own devices to sort out their differences, it’s hard to think that Israel wouldn’t have ethnically cleansed most or all of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank by now. Harsh, brutal, but that is the way nearly all of human history has operated in such cases, especially in that part of the world.
Things are otherwise, however, for now. So Israel has to muddle along. It gets several billion a year in high end American military hardware out of it, so perhaps that (along with the exploding ayatollahs) is some consolation in Jerusalem.
You know, Wayne’s right. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Death to the IRGC!
See how that works, idiots.
Good riddance to evil tyrannical islamist filth.
Lots of Iranians around the world are doing the Trump shuffle to the Village People’s song, YMCA:
https://youtu.be/GLTN-6P8HuY?si=sq6YbkTp3v5aT4cd
“First, it is almost impossible to force a change in power solely by air power. This has been tried numerous times, with little success. Killing the leaders of this terrorist Iranian government is a positive step, but it remains entirely unclear whether this war can produce a better government there.”
There are a few million Iranians on the ground who could do this job. In fact, it is much more in their own interest to do this job, if it is to be done. It gives them the power to affect change, and all we would have done is provide the opportunity, which is what Trump had been saying for a month or two.
“Second, as much as there might be legal precedents that allow President Trump to initiate this action without direct congressional approval, it continues a dangerous trend ceding power away from Congress and to the presidency, in direct opposition to the intentions of the Founding Fathers in their writing of the Constitution. They very much were opposed to giving any president the power to start a war unilaterally.”
Is this really a war or a police action? This does not differ much from Korea, but it has a limit due to more recent laws — laws that were enacted specifically so that presidents could perform this kind of military action without it being a war or a declared war. This is what past Congresses had intended.
The complaints only exist because of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Had this happened under Biden, Obama, Clinton, or Carter, there would not have been such complaints. We know this, because each of those presidents did something similar and had no complaints. At least not from Democrats or any of the other people complaining now.
Edward: I wrote the opening to this essay in order to do something that appears no longer to happen ever in modern debate, outline sensibly and without emotion the rational reasons against this action, without falling into the trap of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
I am generally in favor of this action in Iran, but I also recognize its historical limitations and dangers. I think it behooves us all to be aware of these realities, even if we support what Trump and Israel is doing.
Dave Johnson,
For most of the world, the main concern about this US-Israeli intervention in Iran is what, if anything, it will do to the market price of crude oil. So far, the price run-up has been fairly modest and is unlikely to last long.
Here in the US – except in my benighted state of residence, California, which has cut itself off from domestic crude supplies from elsewhere in the US and is doing its best to shut down what few such remain within its own borders – this run-up in world market prices for crude will not affect us as most of the US crude supply is domestic fracked oil.
It’s not like the Iranian regime had any actual friends among other nations. If a new Iranian government quickly forms and resumes oil shipments, the rest of the world will, for the most part, be fine with all of this. And there will be the added bonus of having to spare no concern, going forward, about what Iran might do with nuclear weapons or what terrorist hugger-mugger it will choose to undertake in one’s own nation.
Here in the US, the reaction by everyone but died-in-the-wool lefties and the lamentably resurgent anti-semitic right has ranged anywhere from general approval to outright ecstatic joy. The socialist-idiot wing of the Democratic Party, of course, which hates the US and reflexively favors its enemies, has predictably decided to take the wrong side of yet another 80-20 issue – particularly the Marxist-jihadi Mayor of NYC.
The neo-Jew-hating right will continue to be upset because this punitive campaign against Iran benefits Israel. They will continue to deny that it has any benefits for the US.
One of the largest of those benefits, by the way, is the elimination of Iran as a supplier of munitions to Russia. This will bend matters still further in Ukraine’s favor and likely materially shorten the war there. The most prominent member of the neo-Jew-hating right, of course, is Tucker Carlson who is also an abject stooge for Vladimir Putin when he isn’t damning Israel and American Jews. So he will be doubly outraged by this two-fer that President Trump has undertaken.
The rest of the MAGA right will, I think, realize fairly soon that this Iran expedition is not the opening phase of another “forever war,” but of the end of the necessity for any more such in the entire Middle East.
It is a profoundly America First thing to do to eliminate this nation’s enemies whenever the opportunity arises. When President Trump re-took office, we had six – the PRC, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba in that order of importance. President Trump has already eliminated Venezuela from that list and Cuba should follow, as collateral damage, in fairly short order. Now, Iran is in the cross-hairs and the regime there seems massively unlikely to survive. Russia will prove a significant part of the collateral damage to the Axis of Scumbags from the Iran chastisement. Given the steadily increased pounding it is getting from Ukraine and the impact of its principal external munitions supply chain now being taken down, Russia could well implode as soon as later this year. There seems little probability that it can survive any longer than sometime in 2027 at most.
So the Axis of Scumbags list has already effectively been reduced by half in length and we might manage to get to 2/3 before year’s end. The remaining two members of this ignoble club can only be watching current events with both shock and awe and with more than a little premonitory dread thrown in. Let us hope that, anent the PRC and Taiwan, one of the results of the current Iran takedown, along with that of Venezuela and the pending capitulation of Cuba, is that President Trump has, as the line from ‘Paths of Glory’ had it, “shot a few to encourage the others.”
The wibbly-wobbly-ness of many European governments, and the EU apparat, are the usual reflexive anti-US knee-jerking followed by at least a bit of sober reflection on the fact that a nuke-free Iran will no longer be threatening a rain of fire on European cities. It may also have been a matter of assuming that immigrant Muslims in their countries would automatically side with Iran, but I think they are finding otherwise.
Richard M,
The likelihood of a Libya-esque outcome in Iran seems modest at worst. While only about half of Iran’s population is actually Persian, the remaining minority populations are not uniformly tribalist. There is always a danger of ethnic separatism when a repressive regime goes down, but I think the Iranian Kurds would be inclined to stay if the new regime is a constitutional monarchist republic. The Iranian Azeri minority is more of a question as it could decide it wants to amalgamate with Azerbaijan. The new Iranian government could best forestall this by being less statist than the current Azerbaijani regime. Ditto for the Iranian Baluchis. Any attempt on their part to hive off would be seriously complicated by their lack of any sea access and the lack of any adjacent Baluchi-majority nation to join.
Good capsule analysis of the wretched current state of British affairs. One can only hope that Reform continues to advance and that Nigel Farage can be at least a usefully-approximate analog of Trump in the UK. Failing that, I think Great Britain will be well and truly cooked.
Anent Israel and the Palestinians, I agree that an actual slaughter – as opposed to a purely rhetorical accusation of “genocide” – would be the ideal solution. Even that would not really be an actual genocide as the Palestinians are not a race, they are merely a small fraction of a very large total Arab Middle East population, most of whom would be overjoyed if these psychopaths would simply disappear. That’s why I favor their comprehensive removal to Syria where the current jihadi government there can do them all in before Israel gets around to dealing decisively with it in Israel’s self-declared role as protector of the Druze – and, perhaps, the Kurds as well.
From the First Barbary War:
“Jefferson made it clear that he was “unauthorized by the constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense.”
I cite this because this was the first major foreign action carried out by the United States after the War for American Independence. The respective war powers between the Executive and Legislative branches have been in flux since. That’s a good thing; as long as the pendulum stays within American principles.
John Adams fought an undeclared naval war with France. It was named “the Quasi War” by later historians.
Just to clarify: when I spoke of “ethnic cleansing,” I did not have anything more in mind than mass departures of the people in question from the territories in question. This is after all basically what happened in 1947-50 in both the Palestine Mandate and most of the Middle East: many Palestinians fled or were driven out of territory within the Green Line, and virtually every single Jew was forced to leave most Arab nations. (Even this is dwarfed by the ethnic cleansing that was happening at the same time in Central Europe, East Asia, and the Indian subcontinent!) Of course, people died in those ethnic cleansings, too, but it was a very small number, and often the result of civilian collateral losses from combat operations…
Nor am I advocating anything; it’s just an exercise in speculative history with an, er, fairly high order of probability.
for 47 years, nothing ever happened
it might not work out but tens of thousands of protesters stood up and died
they’ve earned a shot
B-52s mean air supremacy is here
close air support won’t be far behind
will the lion roar?
https://xcancel.com/Faytuks/status/2028941869376221360#m
“Weapons have been smuggled into Western Iran since last year to arm thousands of Kurdish volunteers”
Apparently CIA is involved.
Maybe what President Trump has been hinting at as what’s still coming? Why send Americans when there’s already a motivated army in place?
“America Dismantles Pirates: The Barbary Wars”
Fat Electrician (November 2023)
https://youtu.be/lcJhmm3D3OY
24:51
Small correction, but Georgetown is in DC, not Virginia.
John Tyree: You are right of course. I was thinking of Alexandria, which is not Georgetown. Now fixed. Thank you.
There’s never been a requirement that Congress declare war when conflict is already underway—due to an adversary attacking U.S. territory, forces, assets, or shipping. Which the present “Islamic Revolutionary” regime in Iran as well as its surrogates abroad have indubitably done, again and again and again, killing many hundreds of Americans.
Sometimes Congress goes ahead afterwards and declares war anyway, as in the Mexican war, as well as World War II, for example, but it need not.
UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh has written about this aspect of American constitutional law.
There’s a report today that Iraqi Kurds are taking up positions within Iran. So maybe that answers the question of how “mere” air power can force a regime change. Now imagine what fun American/Israeli bombers, missilers, and droners will have as Iranian formations attempt to assemble to resist the Kurds?
Michael McNeil: I should point out to you and others who have commented on the Constitutional issues of this Iran action what my point was. To quote myself,
I was not arguing legalities, I was noting a political trend that is not good. Congress has for decades become weaker and weaker, and has done so willingly.
I would put forth; portions of this trend can be traced back to the 17th amendment which provided for the direct election of the Senate. (a necessary but not sufficient reason)
(And the 16th amendment, which allowed the government to tax your income without apportionment.)
Senators were supposed to be accountable to their respective State Legislatures and instead became quasi-national popularly elected redundant clowns.
Concurrently, we’ve always had a Unitary Executive, the President is his own separate branch of government, and is the only official elected by the entire population to carry out their will.
Elections have consequences.
Y M C A
Trump cures cancer!!!!!!
Democrats declare suspicions.
Trump declares breathing is good for you!!!
Democrats pass out while holding breath. No comments made.
Wasn’t the plan always to save Iran until last—having forces from occupied Afghanistan and Iraq in a pincer?
With Iran down, everything else gets more stable.
I would think Democrats would be happy….Red Adair’s ghost is pacing the cemetery as this war has done more to achieve Net Zero than all of Greta’s gretchings or Al Gore bores ;)
Victor Davis Hanson has written extensively on the “loss of deterrence;” easy to lose and hard to re-establish.
We have allowed iran to get to this point, I’d expect them to continue what they have always done unless they are rendered unable. It’s a 12th century mindset with 20th century weapons and oil revenue, totally unacceptable and an existential menace, for my entire adult life. Time for them to GO.
We aren’t the bad guys in all this.
I want them hit, hard, and then we come home. Anything else is a forever-war and you can count me out.
VDH has also opined on the historical necessity, at times, to actually carry out the Experiment as to who is more Powerful and who has the Will. Everyone on Earth knows we have the Power; they just doubt our Will, until Trump…..
New Zealand Family Reacts:
Dismantling Barbary Pirates
https://youtu.be/fO2cYvM9LXE
(25:54)
“The Moroccan-American Treaty of Peace and Friendship” (June 28, 1786)
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-18-02-0196