As tough as the competition is, the most dishonest trope of the entire major-media drive to protect the Islamic Republic of Iran has to be the constant claims that President Donald Trump and the Pentagon “have no plan” for the war, and no clue how they’ll end it — a fecklessness that supposedly has us headed for a “quagmire” if we’re not already in it.
This is a willful and cynical “ignorance”: They refuse to acknowledge what Team Trump has made unmistakably clear — the war’s goals, and how US and Israeli forces are steadily achieving them — while demanding definitive answers on intermediate questions that inherently require addressing as Operation Epic Fury proceeds.
This crew would expect George Marshall to have Patton’s 1945 drive to the Rhine mapped out by the first week after Pearl Harbor, along with the course Tibbets would fly the Enola Gay en route to dropping Little Boy.
Absurd: The president’s been clear about the goals from the start: Epic Fury will eliminate Iran’s nuclear and missile threats, leaving the regime no way to assault its neighbors nor decimate the world’s energy supplies — and the operation will take four to six weeks.
We hope it opens the door to regime change, but that will ultimately be up to Iran’s people and to true patriots among its armed forces.
Trump has also wisely refused to list any tactic as off-limits, including some limited ground operations, and he’s said from the outset that energy prices might well rise temporarily, but that pain is well worth ending this menace once and for all.
To gin up support for the defeatist narrative, the press (and Trump-deranged Democrats like Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen) treat the likes of Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, as a credible reporter.
Seriously: Araghchi was a central source for The Economist’s claim that Iran is winning, with America already mired in Vietnam, Part 2.
This crew would lead the evening news with Iranian AI slop about bombing the Statue of Liberty if they thought they could get away with it.
Republicans in Congress are convinced “the war in Iran is going sideways”? So insists New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg — because Democrats told her that.
Sadly, in these hyperpartisan times, it’s no surprise to see Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) insisting, “The administration has no plan!” — but he was already calling Epic Fury a quagmire” in its first week.
“Trump is sending thousands more troops to the Middle East,” warns Goldberg, “and in the past, when he’s massed military forces outside a hostile country, he’s used them.”
Right, we forgot about the tens of thousands of ground troops he used to invade Venezuela.
It’s all nonstop, cynical doomcasting.
Reality: In the four weeks since the war began, this mission hasn’t wavered and is on track to achieve its aims.
US-Israeli forces are pummeling Iran’s nuclear sites, eliminating its missile-production and -launching facilities in steady order, destroying drone production and working now to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Yes, the Marines and 82nd Airborne might take Kharg Island — an obvious, limited move that Trump first started discussing in the Reagan era, not a desperation tactic.
The defeatists never consider the benefits of Epic Fury’s success: A completely defanged (and possibly even free) Iran, regional stability, even cheaper oil and China and Russia stripped of a useful proxy.
The dangerous thing now would be to heed the media’s evil councils and end operations before the mission is complete — leaving the clique in Tehran still able to close the Strait, still posing a regional threat, still able to recover with help from Beijing and Moscow.
Could Team Trump do a better job countering the media’s disinformation fog? Absolutely: Communicators like Veep J.D. Vance, SecState Marco Rubio and so on should be repeating the basic facts — US goals and how far we’ve gotten on them — nonstop, so the press can’t drown the truth in fog.
Yes, they all have other work to do, but securing the home front by assuring the public that Team Trump knows exactly what it’s doing is a crucial part of the war, too.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
