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| Blumenthal and Murphy |
U.S. Senator Chris Murphy appears to have gotten his
twitters in a twist.
On December 31, the last day of the old decade, Murphy wrote
on twitter: “The attack on our
embassy in Baghdad is horrifying but predictable. Trump has rendered America
impotent in the Middle East. No one fears us, no one listens to us. America has
been reduced to huddling in safe rooms, hoping the bad guys will go away. What
a disgrace.”
Shortly after the
destruction at the embassy, orchestrated by Quds Force thugs under the
direction of Iranian General Qassim Soleimani, the general met an
American drone near the airport and quickly assumed room temperature.
Trump, spurred on, one may fancy, by Murphy’s hectoring,
later boasted that his response to the endangering of embassy officials in Iraq
would not be another Benghazi.
It sure wasn’t. The embassy in Bagdad was not burned to the
ground and its ambassador assassinated, as occurred during the Benghazi
compound assault, in the course of which brave Americans died waiting in vain
for a proper response from President Barack Obama’s White House. Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton hinted, shortly after the news hit the front pages of the
New York Times, that the entire ruckus may have been caused by protesters out
for a stroll.
In fact, Murphy may have been thinking of the inadequate
Benghazi response to an assault on the American compound when he dashed off his
last tweet of the old decade. The attack on the embassy compound in Benghazi
was “predictable.” The Obama administration’s “lead from behind” posture in the
Middle East and elsewhere had “rendered
America impotent.” And the much delayed response of the U.S. Military had
reduced American Embassy staff to “huddling in safe rooms, hoping the bad guys
will go away -- What a disgrace.”
The response to the attack on the American embassy in Iraq
was swift and deadly, prompting the following Tweet from Murphy on Jan 2: “Soleimani
was an enemy of the United States. That’s not a [sic. he meant “in”] question.
The question is this — as reports suggest, did America just assassinate,
without any congressional authorization, the second most powerful person in
Iran, knowingly setting off a potential massive regional war?"
Other Democrats tooted the same note, more or less in
concert. The short answer to Murphy’s question is – No. The preemptive strike
against Soleimani was not an assassination, nor does it signal a war between
Iran and the United States.
The Washington Examiner noted on Jan 2 “The apparent drone
strike came hours after Defense Secretary Mark Esper said that U.S. forces
would preemptively hit Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria if the
paramilitary groups planned further attacks against U.S. bases or personnel.”
In his Daily Ructions column, “A Tale of Two Murphys,”
Hartford Courant columnist Kevin Rennie strung together the two Murphy tweets
but offered no comment. None was needed. Murphy was trying to have it both ways
-- apparently a no, no in politics -- even though having it both ways is the
ambition of every lean and hungry politician on planet earth. If Trump does not
respond vigorously to a brazen attack by terrorists on an American embassy, he
must be called out as a disgraceful coward. If he responds provocatively, as
President Obama did when the ordered a hit on Osama bin Laden, he must be
accused of provoking a new Vietnam War.
The State Department last year labeled the Quds Force a
terrorist organization, and no wonder; it was responsible for killing 608 American soldiers during the Iraq war as
it supplied deadly roadside bombs. His death will be sincerely mourned only by
those in the Middle East who, through proxy armies, have sown death and destruction
throughout the area, devoting special attention to pushing Israel into the sea.
One wonders what the response of former Jewish U.S. Senators such as Abe Ribicoff,
once governor of Connecticut, or Joe Lieberman might have been to the richly deserved death of Soleimani.
They would not have fudged their tweets for partisan reasons, and they would not be
sniffling into tissues at the death of a mayhem maker whose demise is now being
celebrated in Iraq with shouts of joy.
“The President’s
first responsibility,” said Brian Hook, the U.S. Special Representative for
Iran, following the preemptive strike that cut Soleimani’s terrorist career
short, “is the safety of the American people. Qasem Soleimani was plotting
imminent attacks in the region against Americans in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon
that could have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people. The President has
a constitutional responsibility to prevent those actions from killing
Americans. He took an entirely lawful action. I have seen all of the
intelligence that supports the decision. It was very solid intelligence.”
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