Moffett: Pondering And Processing — Iran And Iraq

By Mike Moffett, NH Journal

Two of the 14 Marine Corps Leadership Traits are initiative and decisiveness, and President Donald Trump certainly took some initiative and was decisive with his decision to bomb Iran and decapitate its leaders. (Other traits include dependability, tact, integrity, unselfishness, and loyalty, which are subjects for a different column.)

As was the case with his decision to arrest Venezuelan President Maduro, the response to Trump’s Iranian attacks ranged from excited to unsettled to horrified—depending upon with whom one spoke. Some feel Trump is infallible, while others feel he does nothing right. The latter group immediately pounced and denounced. History may prove them right, but the wiser response is to listen and learn as things unfold. The administration obviously has intelligence and information that observers lack.

What we do know is Iran, as governed, is a terrorist theocracy sworn to obliterate Israel while supporting “Death to America.” Iran and its proxies have indeed murdered countless victims, including hundreds of U.S. Marines in Lebanon, while destabilizing our world as they pursued a terrifying nuclear capability—terrifying in that radical Jihadists seeking to become martyrs would not be constrained by the mutual assured destruction dynamic that kept Communist nukes from being launched.

So, a constant refrain was “Iran must not have nuclear weapons,” a position embraced by countless liberals, including Barack Obama. And yet Obama’s administration, like those of Bush and Biden, was constantly “played” by the Iranians, and its “Supreme Leader,” as Obama repeatedly referred to Ali Khamenei. Obama’s senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett, was born in Iran.

Flattery and bribery proved ineffectual in countering the Ayatollahs. Obama sent a plane with pallets of $400 million in cash to Iran in January 2016. The planes sent by Trump in February 2026 had different cargoes.

Exciting. Unsettling. Horrifying.

In the short term, we must brace for civil war in Iran, which will be awful for the people in that country. We hope and pray that what ultimately emerges is a benign entity that will join the family of nations.

The Iraq experience yields hope. Operation Iraqi Freedom, begun in 2003, was deemed a disastrous failure by 2006, before a troop surge stabilized things. But we don’t hear much about Iraq today.

The head of the long-running United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, Ghulam Isaczai, points to Iraq’s “remarkable transition” to something unfathomable two decades ago. Poverty has been reduced. Refugees have been resettled. The economy is fast-growing. Women have rights. Violence and crime are on the wane. Saddam Hussein’s totalitarian nightmare is history.

Progress takes time. Unforeseen and unintended consequences are inevitable. There will be all sorts of fallout and pain in all sorts of places, including the U.S. Congress, and especially among families who lose loved ones.

Hindsight is 20/20, and we now know that decisive initiatives by the Western powers in 1936 would have derailed Hitler and spared us World War II’s 50 million deaths. Neville Chamberlain showed neither decisiveness nor initiative. Had Iran eventually deployed atomic weapons, current world leaders would be pilloried by future survivors for not taking action when they could have.

But now action has been taken.

And there may be ancillary benefits. That the U.S. has shown itself capable of robust military action is not lost on Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, allies of Ali Khamenei. Indeed, some argue that Operation Epic Fury has perhaps thwarted an anticipated Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Time will tell.

Initiative and decisiveness matter, for better or worse.

In the short term, we would do well to listen and learn, to ponder and process. There will be plenty of time later to condemn—or congratulate.

State Rep. Mike Moffett (R-Loudon) is a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who chairs the House Committee on State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs. He wrote this for NHJournal.com.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.