Welcome to the war that has something in the media for everyone. OK, people who would prefer to be patient and temper their opinions might struggle to find a lot of news fare that suits them, but those who want to rush to conclusions about victory or defeat will find plenty to keep them happy.
Lefties who get all of their news from the Dems' flying monkeys in the mainstream media are currently under the impression that Iran is the greatest superpower in the history of everything and that President Trump haphazardly wandered into Operation Epic Fury with no plan whatsoever.
Those of us who live in reality know that there is a lot of nuance involved in this conflict, but U.S. and Israeli troops have generally been kicking a lot of Iranian regime butt.
What's been maddening to watch is how many people believe that there should already be some resolution and a victor should have been crowned by now, as if they were watching a truncated season of Survivor. Most of these people are on the left, but I've been fielding quite a few queries from our side recently. Perhaps the expectations of some people are unrealistic because Israel was involved in one of the shorter wars in history back in 1967.
Or — I'm going out on a limb here — perhaps the unholy combo of 24/7 news outlets and social media has made people lose their damn minds. That's something that was pretty true long before the first case of Trump Derangement Syndrome was reported. As with so many ills that plague American society today, the presence of TDS has made it all much, much worse.
As I write this column, Operation Epic Fury/Roaring Lion is 40 days old. Yes, it's been such a short period of time that it can still be described in days before it's necessary to convert to weeks. Forty days is only a long time if you're strict about Lent and give up something that you really love, like cheese ("Present"). As far as wars go, this thing is practically embryonic.
This war kicked off the night before my birthday. I spent the weekend celebrating with friends and family and avoiding the news. When I returned to it all on that first Monday, people were already whining about a "forever war." In the days since then, I've read several oh-so-serious articles about the military offensive in Iran turning into a quagmire.
Quite often, I think that people don't know what words mean anymore.
I'm no military expert, but I have read a lot of history books, none of them written by Howard Zinn. I have a vague understanding of how war works, and I know a lot of words. "Protracted" would be an apt word to describe most wars that I've read about. Given that, I know it is nonsensical to start asking if we've won yet mere days or weeks into a conflict.
Iran has been such a hegemonic beast in the Middle East for so long that it would not be at all embarrassing if the United States and Israel had only had one-third of the success that we've seen with Operation Epic Fury/Roaring Lion. If there were daily scorecards in a war, this one might have looked like it was ready for the mercy rule to kick in after a couple of weeks. However, it also would have been naive then to think that the Iranian Thugocracy would fade away easily, even though its leadership had been decimated.
The knee-jerk hot takes from the TDS crowd have been most annoying. The Trump-haters are so blinded by rage that they can't give him credit for his legendary negotiating skills. This is a different kind of negotiation, to be sure, but his tried and true methods are still applicable. It's tedious seeing the leftists rend their garments after President Trump makes a bold, provocative statement. He's been doing this since before he was president. Bluster is a key component of his negotiation strategy.
Mentally unstable leftists will never be honest about how good Trump is at dealing with our adversaries and our allies. He keeps winning, though, which is all that matters. The Democrats are so deeply invested in the dream of him failing that they are essentially rooting for Iran to prevail. It's further proof that they need an insane asylum gulag.
My good friend and partner in thought crime Stephen Green made a great point in his Thursday Essay about the ceasefire, saying that "It's unrealistic to expect to know much at all at this early stage." I would apply that to the entire war at this point. Forty days is still an early stage. We would all love to quickly vote Iran's Islamic fundamentalist overlords off of the island, but as the old Esurance commercials used to say, "That's not how any of this works!"
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