‘Reckless’ Times?

“Reckless” is the word on which the Times has settled in respect of President Trump’s “approach” to Iran. Its editorial complains that the president promised that he would end wars, not start them. Yet he has “instead ordered military strikes in seven nations.” It’s a marker of the Democratic Party’s views going into the mid-terms. It blames the American president for a lack of war aims when the Democrats own war aims run to appeasement.It seems to us that the president made clear his aims early in the joint campaign with Israel. This was in a video in the first minutes of the fighting, when he declared: “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people. Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas and our allies.”What objection can the Times — and the Democrats — have to these war aims? Do they think the president rushed into this long train of powder? Mr. Trump traces things back 47 years to the earliest days of the Islamist regime, when Iranians took Yanks hostage, started chanting “Death to America,” and began waging a campaign of “bloodshed and mass murder, targeting our troops and innocent people in many, many countries.”Six Americans have died in the opening days of combat. Mr. Trump is cautioning that more could fall before the war ends. The conceit on the left is that it’s possible to support our GIs but not the cause for which they’re fighting. This president has eschewed such a stretch. He backs not only our GIs but also their common cause. If all are agreed on the diagnosis, why the Democrats’ hesitation on the cure?The outlook on the left seems to be summed up by the words “yes, but.” The Democratic leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, reckons that “Iran is a bad actor and must be aggressively confronted for its human rights violations, nuclear ambitions, support of terrorism and the threat it poses to our allies like Israel and Jordan in the region.” Mr. Jeffries goes on to doubt that these concerns warrant military action.“However, absent exigent circumstances,” Mr. Jeffries adds, the president needs to seek the okay of Congress before acting. The leader in the upper chamber, Senator Charles Schumer, similarly asserts that “Iran must never be allowed to attain a nuclear weapon.” Mr. Schumer adds: “but the American people do not want another endless and costly war in the Middle East when there are so many problems at home.”Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, too, is following the “yes, but” playbook. “I’m rooting for democracy in Iran,” he explains, “but the most likely outcome here is that hardliners take over the government.” He fears that the mullahs will “restart their missile program, they restart their nuclear program, and we’re just right back at bombing them again and putting American lives and regional lives at risk again in a year or two.”Mr. Murphy speculates that the Pentagon’s plans are “destined to fail” and that “we are going to have regional war breaking out.” Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland says that the American attack is “not making us safer & only damages the US & our interests.” These critics overlook the dangers of leaving Iran’s leaders to their own devices — and the risk of the regime acquiring nuclear arms. That kind of oversight sounds, well, reckless.

‘Reckless’ Times?

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