Tucker: Media brands Biden strike on Syria as 'counter-terrorism'
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' explains why the president brought war back to the Middle East
We are just 36 days into Joe Biden's administration, and he has already fulfilled a major campaign promise.
Don't worry, this is nothing that's going to improve your life or the life of the United States. It's nothing that's going to make you freer or happier, help you drop 20 pounds or bring you closer to your family. It's nothing you can use to buy dinner. You're not getting a stimulus check this week, your kids are not going back to school, you're not getting a raise.
No, the promise Joe Biden remembered wasn't made to you in the first place. It was made to defense contractors and neocon think tanks in Washington. Joe Biden promised them that once he took power, the United States would immediately bring war back to the Middle East after a four-year respite that really agitated people in D.C. When he did that, Biden said, he wouldn't consult Congress or even the Senate parliamentarian before he did it. He'd just do it, and he wasn't kidding.
On Thursday, Biden sent F-15s to kill people in Syria. No one in this country benefited from that, not even in the smallest, most theoretical way. That in itself was deeply reassuring to the political class in Washington. They consider any attempt to improve this country a terrifying form of nationalism. However, to those people, the idea of killing people in a faraway place is absolutely thrilling.
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The official word, in case you weren't tuned in to CNN and MSNBC, is that America killing strangers in Syria was not pointless. That comes straight from experts who believe that Saddam had bioweapons and started a war on the basis of it.
Thursday's strike against Syria, they told us, was "counter-terrorism" and counter- terrorism justifies all. (Keep that in mind going forward, by the way. You don't want "counter-" aimed at you, and let's hope it never is.) In Syria, counter-terrorism means at least 22 people died, according to local reports. The Pentagon says only one person died.
Who were these people, in any case? Who was targeted? The Biden administration says it targeted two militia groups that are aligned with Iran. Members of those groups allegedly fired a rocket into Iraq that killed an American contractor. You may be wondering, "Why are there still American contractors in Iraq after almost two decades and no obvious return?" That's a good question. We'll address that some other time, because here's an even more amazing thing: Both of the militia the Biden administration hit are part of something called the Popular Mobilization Forces, a kind of umbrella group sponsored by the Iraqi government.
Now, the Iraqi government itself is a creation of previous American administrations. So in other words, if you're following all this (and you have been for 18 years at this point), we are now defending Americans in Iraq from people we empowered in the first place to fix a disaster that was caused by our invasion. That's all counter-terrorism, got it? The snake eats its own tail.
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If all of this seems demented to you, rest easy. You should know it was Joe Biden who did it, not Donald Trump. Therefore, it's fine. In fact, it's good. Here's an actual tweet from a former Wall Street executive turned angry social media person called Amy Siskind:
"So different having military action under Biden. No middle school level threats on Twitter. Trust Biden and his team's competence."
Hilarious. With Joe Biden in charge, buildings in Syria don't collapse into rubble, crushing the people inside. No, those buildings simply disappear like distressed companies that people like Amy Siskind melted down for profit on Wall Street.
David French, who used to work at National Review, was also excited about this war. Three years ago, he was distressed by the idea that Trump might attack Syria without permission.
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"If Trump strikes Syria without congressional approval, his Syrian policy will be both imprudent_and_unconstitutional," he tweeted in April of 2018. We at "Tucker Carlson Tonight" were, it should be said, totally opposed to striking Syria at the time -- not because it was unconstitutional, just pointless.
Last week, however, David French reacted to dozens of people dying in Syria with satisfaction before going back writing essays about what a fine Christian he is.
Maybe because she reads David French, White House press secretary Jen Psaki came around, too. She was once opposed to bombing Syria without permission. Here she was on Thursday:
PSAKI: The president is sending an unambiguous message that he's going to act to protect Americans and when threats are posed, he has the right to take an action at the time and in the manner of his choosing.
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It wasn't long ago she was telling us it was totally a violation of international law to bomb Syria without congressional approval. Now she's telling us Joe Biden is going to act to protect Americans.
Now, you're not supposed to notice what was done to "protect Americans" who are languishing in Iraq 18 years after the invasion. If we're going to protect them, why are we making them stay there? What are they doing there? And once again, because it's the only question that ever matters, how is this helping anyone in this country or in any country?
It's not, obviously. And to their credit, neocons have stopped pretending that it is. What this is really about, Joe Biden once explained in public, is helping our Kurdish partners. Here's Joe Biden in 2019, fretting aloud that Donald Trump might withdraw American troops from Syria:
BIDEN: By precipitously withdrawing a small number of American special forces in Syria, Trump managed in one fell swoop to betray our Kurdish partners who helped defeat ISIS, [and] to create a humanitarian crisis with innocent civilians and ethnic and religious minority communities caught in the crossfire.
By the way, the U.S. is attacking the Assad government, the only government in the entire Middle East that's protected the most ancient of religious minorities, the Christian community. They've been slaughtered everywhere except in territory that Assad controls. But he's a brutal dictator, sohat doesn't count.
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But of course, we're doing all of this for our Kurdish partners. Did you know we had Kurdish partners? Did you want them? What exactly have we partnered to do?
"Don't sweat the details," assure the Democrats. The party that runs Baltimore and East St. Louis has a handle on this. They're going to make the Middle East a much better place, just like Hillary Clinton improved Libya. Now it has permanent war and slave markets and they're going to make you much safer in the process.
It's called counter-terrorism. It can't be bad.
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the March 1, 2021 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight".
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