Trump considering renewed military strikes on Iran
Retired Marine Corps Gen. Arnold Punaro joins 'America Reports' to discuss President Donald Trump's contemplation of resumption of military strikes on Iran as tensions rise over demands.
Is the war with Iran "worth it?"
"It" is the loss of 13 American soldiers and scores more seriously wounded. If, as widely expected, combat operations resume those human costs will climb.
So too will gas prices and the prices of everything that depends upon oil. Some cost hikes will be immediate. Some will be longer in arriving. But the world’s most necessary commodity cannot go from $60-$70 a barrel to $100 and higher without a price shock in the wake of that rise. Every American will be impacted.
MORNING GLORY: PRESIDENT TRUMP MUST REJECT A SECOND MUNICH AND HOLD FIRM AGAIN IRAN
President Trump knows this, of course, and argued to Bret Baier in an interview from Beijing last week that while the loss of the soldiers was awful and he regrets it, the war is a necessary evil as wars often are. The president also expressed sympathy for people feeling the pain at the pump, but again stated plainly: Operation Epic Fury had to be undertaken.
The reason is quite simple. Iran intends to obtain nuclear weapons by any means available, and the original ruler and his senior leadership — all dead now, as are their replacements, and many of the replacements of the replacements are dead too — were "crazy," "lunatics," and generally fanatics don’t make for good negotiating partners. President Trump has tried. He’s tried at least four times. But he is not former President Obama for whom any "deal" with Iran was a good deal, even the absurd, loophole riddled "JCPOA."
Unlike Obama, Trump will not let those sorts of people have nukes. They would have used them, President Trump stated again and again, and Israel and all of the Middle East would have been hit with nukes even as the regime hit 14 different countries with ballistic missiles. (Recall that Obama’s absurd theater-kid diplomacy produced a JCPOA that did nothing about Iran’s ballistic missile program or its support of terrorist proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. There is a reason Obama chose Stephen Colbert to sit down with to defend the JCPOA last week. The failed president knew the failed late night host would not be bringing up the obvious flaws in the JCPOA much less the "sunset clauses" that would be kicking in right about now. Colbert, of course, didn’t.)
If you don’t believe President Trump’s assessment of Iranian leadership, reconsider your reasoning. President Trump is right. Religious fanatics can’t have nukes. Period.
About the cost of gas: An argument was often made about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars that average citizens were not called upon to do anything to support the war.
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No draft. No rationing. Not even higher taxes. War bonds, if ever considered, were never offered. Rather, enormous deficits were run up to pay for the decade of war in Iraq which has ended in a stalemate of sorts, and two decades of war in Afghanistan which ended in the debacle that former President Biden simply ordered be abandoned despite the awful cost of that debacle of an exit.
A small percentage of the country that served in its military and their families bore the burdens of those wars. The approximately 7,000 killed and 55,000 wounded in the long wars made the ultimate sacrifice and they and their families carried the heaviest burden, but the entire military made the lift beyond what any civilians did, a collective sacrifice by the military which bear no comparisons. But civilians? No, we did not.
OIL, GAS PRICES JUMP AS TRUMP FLIRTS WITH STRIKING IRANIAN OIL INFRASTRUCTURE
Does not the rise in gas prices destroy at least the argument that the civilians bear no costs of war at least when it comes to this, the Iran War?
You may not like paying the sacrifice. You might want to distributed the cost a different way, say by income tax surcharges. But the cost of war is at least being felt beyond the military.
Americans will soon have a chance to vote on whether they will bear that burden without objection or perhaps even gladly. No small portion of the United States fully supports the crippling of Iraq even at the cost of higher gas prices. The longer the war goes on the higher the cost and the more often and more bluntly President Trump and his closest advisers must make the argument again and again: Crazed religious fanatics cannot have nuclear weapons. Ever.
That is a hill worth waging a political campaign on. Appeasers of Iran will argue that it would never have come to that and that it is "all so unnecessary."
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The United Kingdom and France fell for the Sirens’ song of appeasement in the 1930s, preferring the illusion of negotiations with Hitler. President Trump was never going to be seduced by the foreign policy blob with their acronyms and absurd logic that depended on the word of a regime known best for terrorism and lying for 47 years.
This is an argument the country should and will have. It is one that is long overdue.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show" heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
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