Marc Thiessen, the former George W. Bush speechwriter with four different country flags (and counting) in his X bio, was on Fox News this week accusing anyone who isn’t “celebrating” the war in Iran of being unpatriotic. It shouldn’t have to be said, but it’s not only an acceptable position to be ambivalent toward the war, it’s the most rational position possible.
The war is an existential crisis between nations. And not just ours, Israel, or Iran. The entire Gulf region is in peril, and the consequences are hitting the rest of the globe. People are dying, energy prices are soaring, and at any given the moment, the Trump administration changes our objectives and the definition of victory. Thiessen probably asks, “What’s not to love?” but for anyone who has to fill up their tank this weekend or who perhaps simply prefers knowing what to expect when his president takes us to war with Israel strapped to our side, it’s not a party.
“I’ve never seen a war where so many people were rooting for failure in my life,” Thiessen said Tuesday on Fox. “I mean, where’s the rally-around-the-commander-in-chief effect in this country? … Where’s the patriotism?”
It’s exactly what you’d expect from someone whose job was literally to promote the Iraq war.
“We should all be celebrating the chance of eliminating this threat,” he said, “and having security and peace in the Middle East. … I think it’s quite frankly shameful.”
When it comes to war, people like Thiessen are incapable of considering that this isn’t a romantic adventure where it’s predetermined that America vanquishes all enemies in high drama glory. No, sometimes they end more like our most recent foray into the sand pits of hell known as the Middle East. Recall that after nearly two decades in Afghanistan to the tune of trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives, we left with nothing. We did lose another 13 Americans in the process of exiting, though.
That’s not to say Afghanistan was a waste of time or that it wasn’t worth the blood and treasure. It’s to remember what these projects clearly so beloved by Thiessen cost.
We know that Iran is run by savages and the regime — what’s left of it — is animated by a sick religion. To see it degraded and perhaps wiped out is by any pro-American measure a good thing. But the game doesn’t end there, and that’s particularly true in this unique situation where we have what is at minimum an equal partner in Israel. (Though some would argue Israel is calling more shots than not, and those people wouldn’t be demonstrably wrong.)
In this situation, in which our greatest ally has its own motives and ambitions, directly implicating our country in everything it does, we don’t know how it ends. We don’t know what will happen between now and that ending. It’s not a lack of patriotism to acknowledge that reality or even fret over it.
