In on sentence in their New York Times op-ed Elizabeth Cobbs and Kimberly C. Field demonstrate that they don’t understand U. S. history or foreign policy:

America desperately needs a new grand strategy — a concise, high-level vision for our role in the world.

The United States does not have a grand strategy and has never had a grand strategy in that sense. Our grand strategy has been an emergent phenomenon that arose from the contending political, economic, and social forces in the country. Walter Russell Mead outlined the dominant forces that have shaped that grand strategy in his book, Special Providence, characterizing them as Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, Hamiltonian, and Wilsonian. Another way of looking at them is pessimistic idealist, pessimistic realist, optimistic realist, and optimistic idealist. We are too large and diverse a country for any grand strategy but our emergent grand strategy has been remarkably consistent and persistent over time. Failing to understand that is to fail to recognize how we are different from France, the United Kingdom, or Germany. Or Russia or China for that matter.

To understand how that consensus functions, consider the events leading up to our entry into World War II. Wilsonians had supported our entering the war as early as the Spanish Civil War. Hamiltonians came on board quickly (war is good for business). The holdouts were Jacksonians and Jeffersonians.

That all changed with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Jacksonians, without whose support U. S. warmaking would be impossible, immediately changed from disinterest in what was going on in Europe to a desire for revenge. Isolationist Jeffersonians stopped protesting entering a European war in the interest of defending the republic. We were united and that persisted throughout the war.

What we need is not a grand strategy but a consensus. That will never be accomplished by having one imposed by experts, the process experts invariably prefer. What has actually happened over the last 30 years is that Congress has abandoned its Constitutional duties and Hamiltonians and Wilsonians have run rampant. Today’s Wilsonians come in two flavors—neoconservatives who believe they can spread liberal democracy by the sword and liberal interventionists who want to save people, either from their tyrannical rulers or from themselves or each other. Of course so long as they aren’t taxed to pay for our wars, Hamiltonians have no problem with them. As noted above, wars are good for business. If our few lonely Jeffersonians had their way we wouldn’t be at war at all and if the Jacksonians had their way the Middle East would have no cities. You need only look at pictures of Dresden or Nagasaki during World War II to understand the Jacksonian way of war.

I had a bit of trouble with Bobby Ghosh’s discussion at Bloomberg of whether Iran under the mullahs were a “rational actor”. He thinks it is:

My own view is that the regime has just one priority: its own perpetuation. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has demonstrated repeatedly in his three decades in charge that his sole objective is to preserve the peculiar form government that vests him with vast power over his people with little accountability. But his pursuit of that priority is as likely to be informed by ideology as it is by logic, as much by paranoia as it is by pragmatism.

That’s spoken like any good 21st century Western materialist. I would suggest he cast his mind back to Operation Eagle Claw. Back in 1980 the mission to rescue the American hostages being held in our Tehran embassy was a failure due to mechanical problems and a sandstorm. On hearing of it Ayatollah Khomeini declared it a sign of the direct intervention of Allah on Iran’s behalf. How does that fit into the “rational actor” paradigm?

It seems to me that either a) you’ve got to think that the mullahs are just faking it and are just as materialist as a Western politicians; b) Iran under the mullahs is not a rational actor; or c) you’ve got to figure out a way to include expectations of the direct intervention of Allah under the rubric of “rational actor”.

Mr. Ghosh does touch on this a little in his piece:

Plenty of smart people — including military men such as General Martin Dempsey, former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff — say it is. Other foreign-policy thinkers take the more nuanced view that Iran is rational without being reasonable: It has different priorities from those of its enemies, but its behavior is entirely logical in the context of those priorities.

I fit more into the “rational without being reasonable” camp but I would phrase it differently. The mullahs aren’t Western politicians and they aren’t materialists but they are pragmatists as they understand pragmatism. IMO that’s what we should be worrying about.

The remarks about the assassination of the commander of the Iranian Quds Force in Iraq continue. The New York Times has devoted nearly the entirety of its online opinion page to it with editors and columnists alike condemning the action, warning of dire consequences. I thought I might express my own views. I will do so as tersely as possible in bullet format.

• Iran has been a major power in the Middle East for nearly 3,000 years. At its greatest extent the First Persian Empire went from parts of Eastern Europe on the West, parts of Egypt on the Southwest, all of the Middle East, and parts of India on the East. It is one of the oldest continuous cultures in the world. Those saying that this is the first time the Iranians have been a major force in the Middle East are misinformed.
• Throughout most of U. S. history our relationship with Iran has been favorable.
• The claim that the U. S. overthrew the Mossadegh regime in 1953 is an exaggeration, a combination of Soviet disinformation and modern Iranian creation myth, abetted by Kermit Roosevelt’s resume padding. It was overthrown by a putsch of Iranian military offices with encouragement from Britain and the United States. The most we did was supply a little walking around money for paid agitators. I have read the account of the putsch by one of the officers involved and I believe it.
• The Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with the United States since its beginnings. Occupying our embassy and holding members of our embassy staff hostage was an act of war. Failing to protect our embassy was an act of war.
• The present ruling regime are very bad people. When they came to power they executed thousands of their own citizens probably including some of my college classmates. Remembering Mossadegh, initially those executed were military officers and royalists. Later, recognizing their mistake, they began murdering members of Tudeh and those who sympathized with them. Estimates vary on how many were executed, probably in the tens of thousands.
• Like the Soviet Union the present regime is millennialist. It is what makes them dangerous.
• That’s the reason that Saddam Hussein started his war with Iran. Most Iraqis are Shi’ites and Saddam was afraid that the Iranian revolution would spread to Iraq.
• Most of the Iranians who died in that war died before the U. S. had supplied anything other than non-lethal aid to the Iraqis, probably before we had supplied any aid at all. Saddam wasn’t mining the Gulf but the Iranians were.
• I don’t believe in advancing our foreign policy interests by assassination or by war. That’s why I oppose Soleimani’s assassination.
• I think the threat posed by Iraq joining forces with Iran is greatly exaggerated. Most Iraqi Shi’ite clerics are not Khomeinist. Those clerics are actually more of a threat to the present Iranian regime than we are.
• The Iranians had an active nuclear weapons program until 2003. The IAEA has said that it has found no credible evidence of an active nuclear weapons program since 2009.
• We don’t know what we don’t know about Iran. Our human intelligence in Iran is not good although Israel’s appears to be.
• Israel is extremely worried about Iranian nuclear weapons. Israel is about the size of a good-sized U. S. county or smallish state. One well-placed and appropriately-sized nuclear weapon would destroy Israel. Given Iran’s obvious views about Israel and its support of Hezbollah, along with Israel’s vulnerability the Israelis’ views of Iran are understandable.
• I’m not worried about Iran cozying up to China. If the Iranians think that the U. S. attitude is arrogant, wait until they’ve dealt with China for a while.
• I doubt that the present Iranian regime can persist for long. It is not a popular regime and its mismanagement is increasingly obvious.
• I think that our interests are best served by strategic patience with respect to Iran. However, Iran’s recent provocations not the least being the threats to our embassy in Iraq make Soleimani’s assassination understandable.

I want to commend to your attention a piece published at Pat Lang’s place by an Australian member of his “committee of correspondence”. Here’s a snippet:

I am a member of august clubs and societies around the world but the membership I most treasure is that of a volunteer fire fighter in the local brigade. To be judged worthy of a place on the fire ground is, to me, the child of immigrants, a pearl beyond price precisely because it is awarded, not by the great and good, but by tradesman, farmers, shopkeepers – the least in society who have judged me capable of serving the community. I am so proud. A month ago I was part of a strike team sent to Northern New South Wales for a week to grapple with their fires, I even got a lift home in a C17 Globemaster.

We are currently facing bushfires near us affecting five times the size of last years California blazes – 500,000 Hectares, 1.2 million acres across the Northeast of Victoria and into New South Wales. Our truck was called out to join a strike team of five tankers at seven am on New Years Eve to go about a hundred miles north to grapple with the edge of the monster which we did, leaving our tanker for a changeover crew early on New Years day.

Read the whole thing. On reading it my wife, two of whose uncles and whose brother are retired firefighters and one of whose nephews is a firefighter, said “Thank you for that (second to) last paragraph”.

I agree with Victor Joecks’s assessment of the campaign for the Democratic nomination for president, published in the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

Even though the Iowa caucus isn’t for another month, I feel confident that Joe Biden will be the Democrat presidential nominee. Here’s why.

It starts with the polls. Biden has been dominant. Since Real Clear Politics started its polling average in December 2018, Biden has led for all but one day. Sen. Elizabeth Warren eclipsed him by 0.2 percentage points on Oct. 2. She now trails him by 13 percent and is in third place, also trailing Sen. Bernie Sanders.

This isn’t how many political pundits expected last year to go. They chalked up Biden’s pre-announcement lead to his high name ID. He was supposed to gaffe his way into an early exit. He wasn’t progressive enough for the liberal wing of the party either.

What makes Biden’s durability look sustainable is that he hasn’t been a great candidate. Far from it. His debates have been cringeworthy.

He goes on to catalogue a number of Biden’s gaffes. We should get used to them. We’ll hear a lot more between now and November. I also think it’s quite possible that the early primaries could be run by several different candidates.

Mr. Joecks concludes:

There’s a reason political pundits usually make predictions as late in the game as possible. A few days can be a lifetime in politics. Any number of things could radically alter the race — Michelle Obama or Oprah would win if either jumped in. Biden could have a medical issue. Warren could join Sanders on a left-wing unity ticket.

All that said, I believe Biden will be the Democratic nominee and a serious threat to President Donald Trump.

The only thing I can add is that the political landscape is littered with the dead or dying ambitions of people who underestimated Donald Trump. There were many lessons to be learned from the 2016 election but the most important is that just because you tell a pollster you disapprove of Donald Trump doesn’t mean you won’t vote for him.

I found Joseph Sternberg’s prediction in the Wall Street Journal of victory in Trump’s trade war in China so problematic I hardly know where to begin. Let’s begin at the beginning:

A new year brings new optimism that the U.S.-China trade war might not blow up the global economy after all. The two sides are on track to sign a “phase one” deal within weeks. Oddly, no one has stopped to ask if America is ready for what will happen if President Trump “wins” the trade war.

Mr. Trump’s premise is that China exports too much, and the U.S. exports too little. That’s an economically dodgy proposition—trade surpluses and deficits are neither “good” nor “bad”—and as a factual matter Mr. Trump’s thinking is roughly a decade out of date.

But I have issues with this:

While China still runs a trade surplus with the U.S., its trade position with the world as a whole is changing dramatically.

China’s current-account surplus—the amount by which its exports of goods and services and income from overseas investments exceeds imports—has shrunk for years.

China doesn’t just run a trade surplus with the U. S. Based on the World Bank figures for 2017, the most recent year for which data are available, China runs surpluses with every North American country, every European country except for Finland (cellphone technology) and Norway (oil), most South American countries, most African countries, and India. Yes, most of its trade surplus is with the United States. What is actually happening is that China imports raw materials and exports manufactured goods.

It’s likely to tip into a deficit early this decade, meaning China will import more goods and services (and receive less profit from overseas) than it exports.

Why would he say that? It isn’t the trend. I presume he’s speculating based on demographics:

One reason is that China’s population is aging, and its working-age population declining. As this happens, older households spend down their savings. This boosts demand for imported goods. It also upends an economic model dependent on financial repression—that is, funneling household savings (for which Chinese savers receive outrageously low interest) into inefficient state-owned enterprises that fuel the export machine.

China remains an authoritarian country Translation: the rules of economics are not the only rules that apply. And this statement just baffles me:

Another is that China has exhausted its ability to boost exports by undercutting other producers on price to poach market share. China can’t absorb all manufacturing capacity for every good in the world.

To me that appears to fall under the category of wishful thinking. The only thing that would stop China from continuing to absorb manufacturing capacity is financial collapse, something increasingly likely to happen. That is explicitly what the Made in China 2025 plan means. Then he makes the single statement with which I agree wholeheartedly:

Beijing’s alternative would have been to use China’s own economic growth to boost global demand—making the global pie bigger so that China’s piece also could grow in absolute terms. Alas, the Communist Party’s decadeslong use of industrial policy centered on suppressing domestic demand foreclosed this option.

That’s what victory would look like to me. Not China importing more raw materials or exporting less. The balance of his piece is a lot more wishful thinking.

Contrary to Mr. Sternberg, I think that Hong Kong tells us the future of China. Power will continue to be concentrated into Xi’s (or his successor’s) hands. There will be increasing repression. Ultimately, there will be an attempt at undoing 1979. The Chinese Communist Party has little alternative if they wish to retain control and they do. There really is no other game in town for them and they have no regard for ordinary Chinese people.

My experience in life is that there is a nearly irresistible temptation to double down on failing strategies and China’s leaders are no different. They would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.

Peggy Noonan makes some predictions in her latest Wall Street Journal column:

On the impeachment of the American president, the story’s already been written, hasn’t it? It didn’t quite work, did nothing to help and little to hinder his position. The question whether to have witnesses in the Senate trial is a side issue. He can’t be proved more guilty. Even his supporters know he leaned on Ukraine for political gain. They judged this deserving of embarrassment but not removal. It will be the impeachment that didn’t move the needle, that history barely remembers.

On to the real action, the presidential election 10 months away.

The Democratic primary field is still flailing and doesn’t see it’s flailing. At the moment their theory of the country is wrong, and it’s wrong because it’s a theory, not a cold-eyed look at circumstances and facts on the ground. That is what good generals look at first. If there is a grinding war or an economic downturn people will want change and the out party has a good shot. If the economic downturn is severe they will consider deep structural change, even radical change such as socialism. It isn’t true that America will never go socialist. Maybe it will, but not under current conditions—full employment, rising wages.

Maybe all this will be settled at an open convention. But they ought to know by now they went too far left too quickly. And sometimes you have to stand up to the base.

President Trump is no doubt happy. He thinks he’s beating his domestic enemies. The great threats are North Korea and Iran. On the latter he will experience two conflicting impulses. On the one hand he sees himself as Mr. No More Benghazis—I’m the tough guy, I’m not afraid to take action. On the other, he sees himself as the unconventional president who doesn’t have wars, who thinks the Mideast is a loser’s game, who wants out.

Underlying his eventual decisions will be an unspoken theme of his re-election campaign: I’ve been president three years and the world didn’t blow up. My critics said it would because I’m crazy. I’m crazy like a fox! I kept things cool. That theme is about to be put to a test.

In the 2020s, the American position on China will harden—not the government’s but the country’s. Whatever happens with the administration and China, Mr. Trump will think it’s about him and lose interest when it appears not to be. But among the people, especially the business class, the perception will deepen that China is not our friend. Channeling this into the creation of an actual coherent China policy will be the big work of the next administration. This one doesn’t do coherent.

The belief that big tech needs to be corralled—to be broken up or declared public utilities—will grow on the left and right. The big companies are too powerful and have too insinuating an effect on our lives. This won’t be Mr. Trump’s issue—again he thinks it’s about him, and whether their algorithms are unjust to him and to conservatives. He wants big tech to bow to him, and they will. They’ll come for dinner, be his pals and work out deals. They think he can be had. He can. But the issue isn’t going away, and wise lefties and creative conservatives may fully seize it.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi made herself look ridiculous this year when she backed lowering the voting age to 16. This is an idiotic and destructive idea, an epic and hackish pander, and is offensive to the baseline reality that the adults of a great nation have the right to govern its affairs. It will go nowhere, but the coming decade may see some pushback against the 18-year-old vote, passed in 1971. A lot has changed since then. We know the brains of 18-year-olds are not fully developed and haven’t fully knitted. Young people are educated more poorly, and the screens that surround them and through which they learn encourage sensation, not thought. Their experience of the world is limited; most are financially and emotionally supported by others. All this as the questions we face grow more complex. We should raise the voting age, not lower it.

The past decade saw the rise of the woke progressives who dictate what words can be said and ideas held, thus poisoning and paralyzing American humor, drama, entertainment, culture and journalism. In the coming 10 years someone will effectively stand up to them. They are the most hated people in America, and their entire program is accusation: you are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic; you are a bigot, a villain, a white male, a patriarchal misogynist, your day is over. They never have a second move. Bow to them, as most do, and they’ll accuse you even more of newly imagined sins. They claim to be vulnerable victims, and moral. Actually they’re not. They’re mean and seek to kill, and like all bullies are cowards.

Everyone with an honest mind hates them. Someone will finally move effectively against them. Who? How? That will be a story of the ’20s, and a good one.

I wish I believed her predictions but I’m not a Whig. What I see is an America that bears little resemblance to the one I wanted when I was 20 and continues to move in the wrong direction.

In his latest Washington Post column George Will has unleached his waggish side:

Today’s impeachment has had benefits and will have more. Attentive Americans already have learned much about the difficulty and potential perils of lassoing a runaway president with a lariat woven of concepts such as “abuse of power” (which presidents were innocent?) and “obstruction of Congress” (how defined, and by whom?). Soon Americans will learn much, not about the president — he is an open comic book who has read himself to the country for years — but about senators, a slew of whom aspire to be his successor.

Intelligent, informed, public-spirited Republican senators can conclude that, because the United States is riven by recriminations hurled by irreconcilable factions and because institutions are indiscriminately distrusted, it is imprudent to remove the president 10 months before voters can neuter him. Or such senators can decide that this president’s deeds, regarding Ukraine and in frustrating congressional investigation thereof, are execrable but insufficient to justify truncating a presidential term that is almost 75 percent over.

Or blinkered Republican senators can affirm the president’s self-assessment as perfect yet persecuted. And incandescent Democratic senators can demand his removal — due process and valuable norms be damned — because he threatens due processes of law and valuable norms.

Senators must now risk indecent exposure of their minds. In 10 months, voters will decide what to do about the president’s malignant frivolousness.

Mr. Will knows quite well that there are no “intelligent, informed, public-spirited” senators, Republican or Democratic. What we actually have are pompous, self-interested partisans, presidents-in-waiting in their own minds. That has been insured by the rise of political parties, the popular election of the Senate, and the imperial presidency. Indecent exposure, indeed.

The editors of the New York Times are wary about the situation WRT Iran following the Trump Administration’s assassination of the commander of the Quds Force:

Given the enormous risks to which President Trump and his hawkish secretaries of state and defense, Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Esper, have exposed the nation, they must promptly and convincingly explain their reasons for ordering so fateful an action. The explanation had better be good: Mr. Trump’s record of lies, lies and more lies; his impeachment on charges of misusing the power of his office; and his record of improvising foreign policy according to his immediate political calculations have undermined his credibility, at home and abroad. Congress and the American public need the facts.

Another fair question: Why didn’t the White House alert senior Democrats in Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as is customary before a major military action?

I think I can answer that second question. This is a president for whom personal relationships are extremely important. If anything Democratic Congressional have gone out of their way to alienate President Trump. Besides he’s not obligated to notify them of anything.

The editors of the Washington Post explain the situation pretty well:

MAJ. GEN. Qasem Soleimani was an implacable enemy of the United States who was responsible for hundreds of American deaths, as well as countless atrocities in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere. His death in a drone strike was being cheered Friday by U.S. allies and progressive forces across the region, from Israelis and Saudis to the pro-reform demonstrators of Beirut and Baghdad. That, however, doesn’t mean that President Trump’s decision to assassinate him was wise, or that it will ultimately benefit U.S. interests.

The consequences of the strike are unpredictable, but there is no denying the risk that the United States will be pulled more deeply into the Middle East and its conflicts. Having made clear that he wants to pull the nation out of those conflicts, and having said as recently as Tuesday that he wanted peace with Iran, Mr. Trump has committed an act of escalation and now is deploying more than 4,000 additional troops to Kuwait as a hedge against Iranian counterstrikes.

It’s certainly possible that the killing will have the effect of deterring further Iranian attacks on Americans, such as the rocket strike that killed a U.S. contractor at an Iraqi base last week, or the assault by Iranian-backed militias on the embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday. The loss of Soleimani might disorient and demoralize the militia forces he steered. The Trump administration is clearly hoping Tehran will absorb the blow and retreat, which is why Secretary of State Mike Pompeo kept talking Friday about “de-escalation.”

But Iran might choose to strike back, if not immediately then in coming days and weeks. Targets within Iranian reach include U.S. embassies and citizens across the Middle East; shipping in the Persian Gulf; Saudi oil fields; and Israeli cities, against which Soleimani aimed thousands of missiles. Have Mr. Trump and his aides thought through the possible Iranian responses and fully prepared for them? Does the administration have a clear goal? While Mr. Trump was still tweeting about negotiation, some of his aides appeared bent on regime change in Tehran.

While New York Times columnist Tom Friedman is rather obviously of mixed mind about the assassination:

The whole “protest” against the United States Embassy compound in Baghdad last week was almost certainly a Suleimani-staged operation to make it look as if Iraqis wanted America out when in fact it was the other way around. The protesters were paid pro-Iranian militiamen. No one in Baghdad was fooled by this.

In a way, it’s what got Suleimani killed. He so wanted to cover his failures in Iraq he decided to start provoking the Americans there by shelling their forces, hoping they would overreact, kill Iraqis and turn them against the United States. Trump, rather than taking the bait, killed Suleimani instead.

I have no idea whether this was wise or what will be the long-term implications. But here are two things I do know about the Middle East.

First, often in the Middle East the opposite of “bad” is not “good.” The opposite of bad often turns out to be “disorder.” Just because you take out a really bad actor like Suleimani doesn’t mean a good actor, or a good change in policy, comes in his wake. Suleimani is part of a system called the Islamic Revolution in Iran. That revolution has managed to use oil money and violence to stay in power since 1979 — and that is Iran’s tragedy, a tragedy that the death of one Iranian general will not change.

Today’s Iran is the heir to a great civilization and the home of an enormously talented people and significant culture. Wherever Iranians go in the world today, they thrive as scientists, doctors, artists, writers and filmmakers — except in the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose most famous exports are suicide bombing, cyberterrorism and proxy militia leaders. The very fact that Suleimani was probably the most famous Iranian in the region speaks to the utter emptiness of this regime, and how it has wasted the lives of two generations of Iranians by looking for dignity in all the wrong places and in all the wrong ways.

The other thing I know is that in the Middle East all important politics happens the morning after the morning after.

Yes, in the coming days there will be noisy protests in Iran, the burning of American flags and much crying for the “martyr.” The morning after the morning after? There will be a thousand quiet conversations inside Iran that won’t get reported. They will be about the travesty that is their own government and how it has squandered so much of Iran’s wealth and talent on an imperial project that has made Iran hated in the Middle East.

And yes, the morning after, America’s Sunni Arab allies will quietly celebrate Suleimani’s death, but we must never forget that it is the dysfunction of many of the Sunni Arab regimes — their lack of freedom, modern education and women’s empowerment — that made them so weak that Iran was able to take them over from the inside with its proxies.

I honestly don’t know what to make of it all. It is obvious that the United States has been engaged in a low-level conflict with Iran since 1979, with most of the shooting being done by the Iranians. The Iranian mullahs actually declared war against us then. In the regime’s creation myth the U. S. plays the role of villain.

We also know that we can’t depend on our own news media as disinterested reporters of the truth.

I have also acknowledged that I don’t really understand how President Trump’s mind works How much attention does he pay to his advisors? How much does he rely on what the Israelis are telling him or what his closest advisors are reporting to him about what the Israelis are telling them? Does he go by his gut? Does he act on impulse?

I think it’s clear that he’s stirring the pot. What comes out is anyone’s guess.

Update

The editors of the Wall Street Journal apparently approve of the assassination:

The U.S. President had shown great restraint—more than we thought he should—in not retaliating after Iran or its proxies shot down an American drone, attacked Saudi oil facilities, and attacked bases in Iraq with U.S. troops 10 times in the last two months.

Mr. Trump finally drew a line at the death of an American contractor and the storming of the Embassy. Perhaps he heard echoes of Barack Obama’s failure in Benghazi. Whatever Mr. Trump’s calculation, Mr. Khamenei now has to consider that even targets inside Iran are not safe.

The death of Soleimani should also reassure U.S. allies spooked by Barack Obama’s many capitulations and Mr. Trump’s partial withdrawal from Syria last year. This assumes Mr. Trump will be resolute if Iran escalates and doesn’t withdraw remaining U.S. forces from Iraq or Syria.

Iraq’s caretaker Prime Minister, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, condemned the Soleimani strike, but he hasn’t spoken for his countrymen since promising to resign in November amid popular unrest. Iranian-backed forces helped slaughter hundreds of Iraqi protesters, and many Iraqis took to the streets to celebrate Soleimani’s death. The Iraqi Parliament still may vote to push U.S. troops out of the country, but it would be a mistake. The U.S. goal in Iraq is to help ensure Iraqi independence from a revival of Islamic State and Iranian meddling.

The least credible criticism is coming from American Democrats, especially those who worked for the Obama Administration. Their policy was to appease Tehran with a nuclear deal that would supposedly induce its leaders to join the civilized world. Instead the deal’s cash windfall empowered Soleimani to export revolution.

Now they’re fretting that responding to Soleimani’s mayhem is too risky. Joe Biden said Thursday Soleimani “supported terror and sowed chaos,” but that doesn’t negate “the fact that this is a hugely escalatory move in an already dangerous region.” In other words, Soleimani was a deadly menace, but the U.S. should have done nothing about his depredations because Iran could hit back. That is appeasement, not leadership.