The Mainstream Media (MSM) reaction to the killing of Qasem Soleimani has been, if nothing else, predictable. Trump ordered the hit on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General when it was known he would be traveling with his entourage along the Baghdad airport access road in Iraq. It was a decisive and devastating strike, eliminating Soleimani, four of his fellow Quds Force commanders and the head of an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia. It occurred in Iraq, a designated war zone, after Iran-backed militias rocketed several coalition bases killing an American contractor, and after an attack on the U.S. Embassy.
According to the MSM version of events, Trump acted impulsively, oblivious to the unpredictable and disastrous consequences that were sure to follow. Here are a few samples:
New York Times, January 8, 2020: The Trump We Did Not Want to See
The reality of Donald Trump — an amoral narcissist with no capacity for reflection or personal growth — is evident from his decades in public life. But rather than face this, too many people have rejected the facts in front of them, choosing an illusion instead of the disturbing truth.
The past week has been a prime example of this phenomenon. On Thursday night, the United States killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran leader of the Islamic Republic’s Quds Force and one of the most powerful military leaders in the region.
Washington Post, January 9, 2020: Trump does not have a foreign policy. He has a series of impulses.
The problem with Trump’s foreign policy is not any specific action. The killing of Soleimani could be justified as a way to respond to Iranian provocations, but this move, like so much of Trump’s foreign policy, was impulsive, reckless, unplanned and inconsistent — and as usual, the chief impact is chaos and confusion.
Salon, January 9, 2020: Press Watch: Here's the crucial context every article on Trump and Iran should include
The decision to kill Soleimani was impulsive, inflammatory and highly unusual. Journalists must say that clearly....
There’s no evidence of a normal deliberative process.
- Trump does not pay attention to details.
- He does not display any appreciation for strategic planning
- The support system of knowledgeable, experienced people to which a president would normally turn for advice in such a circumstance does not exist.
- There is no evidence that any normal procedures were followed in this process.
Once again the media move in lockstep, ignoring that which contradicts the preconceived narrative. But there are several things immediately evident from this strike.
First, there was good intelligence on the plans and whereabouts of Soleimani. We knew where he was going to be and when he would be there. Because Soleimani was taken out in the early hours of the morning, there was no collateral damage. Recent Twitter reports say that a number of IRGC commanders have been arrested, suggesting that Iran has taken steps to find and plug an intelligence leak.
Second, the hit on Soleimani puts an exclamation point on the departure from a well worn approach to American foreign policy in the Middle East. Over the past four decades American Middle East policy has been based on two delusions that Trump has rejected. Caroline Glick describes them in her recent article, Donald Trump and the mythmakers. First is the myth that allowed American presidents to evade any obligation to hold Iran accountable for the crimes of its proxies.
[W]hen Iranian "students" seized the US Embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, they placed the Carter administration in a dilemma: If President Jimmy Carter acknowledged that the "students" weren’t students, but soldiers of Iran’s dictator Ayatollah Khomeini, the US would be compelled to fight back. And Carter and his advisers didn't want to do that.
So rather than admit the truth, Carter accepted the absurd fiction spun by the regime that Khomeini was an innocent bystander who, try as he might, couldn't get a bunch of "students" in central Tehran to free the hostages.
For forty years Iran has been attacking America through proxies, and for forty years every president since Carter has gone along with the fiction that it's beyond Iran's control, and so the Iranian regime has never been held responsible. Which brings us to the second myth, which is the one that enables the first:
The second false narrative that has formed the basis of US Middle East policy since Carter is that Israel and the so-called "occupation" are responsible for the absence of peace in the Middle East.
As long as American presidents could plausibly blame West Bank "occupation" by Israel for any of the Middle East unrest, they could ignore Iran's hand in the havoc wrought by their terrorist proxies and thus avoid uncomfortable confrontations. Forty years of bombings and rocket attacks were only what Israel brought upon itself — or so we were all supposed to pretend.
Trump first signaled his rejection of this traditional blame-Israel posture by recognizing Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel, and then moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. More recently Trump has discontinued a policy that originated in the Carter administration, the one that considered Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be illegal under international law.
When Trump dropped the hammer on Soleimani, he left no doubt about where he believes Middle East unrest originates. Trump's new policy makes crystal clear that it's the Islamic leaders in Iran who should be seriously concerned about what America might do, instead of the other way around. Iran will be held accountable.
This represents a paradigm shift that MSM have yet to internalize. Instead the media have chosen to indulge themselves in yet another round of projection. It's the media, not Trump, who are unable to pay attention to details. It's the media, not Trump, who are unable to appreciate strategic planning, particularly the strategic planning that has brought us to this moment. America is in a much stronger position, economically and militarily, than it was when Trump took office. Gone unnoticed is that President Trump has put himself into position where he can do what six presidents before him were unable or unwilling to do — confront Iran and its proxies.
Strange as this may sound, tax policy was the instrumental first step. Cutting marginal income tax rates, a move that unquestionably encourages investment, provided a boost to the U.S. economy. A more powerful boost, though only a one-timer, was in the tax treatment of corporate overseas income and the subsequent repatriation of huge sums of money back into the American economy. However, the tax cuts that put us into uncharted territory were the dramatic reductions corporate tax rates, which instantly made U.S. corporations more competitive in the global economy. The aim and the result of all of those cuts was a hiring binge.
Trump made it easier still for companies to hire workers by requiring that the federal agencies cut regulations. Trump demanded that for each new federal regulation proposed, two existing regulations had to be rescinded. In the deregulation frenzy that followed eight federal regulations have been cut for each new regulation proposed.
To the astonishment of establishment economy pundits, unemployment dropped to historic lows across all demographics. The American economy picked up steam just as it was expected to go into recession. Consumers were driving it as more Americans had jobs and money in their pockets. The strong consumer driven economy made the next step possible, that of renegotiating trade deals.
Trump's tariffs became the argument that convinced America's trading partners that Trump was serious about renegotiating new deals. Oh, the hand wringing. According to media consensus, Trump's trade war — the result of Trump's tariffs — would be the cause of a worldwide depression. Again, to the great surprise of mainstream pundits, the consumer driven economy easily withstood the effects of the tariffs. Trump's boast, that America could win any trade war, was borne out. The USMCA, NAFTA's replacement, awaits Senate approval. Phase One of a China trade deal is about to be signed. Investor confidence as measured by the major stock market indices is at an all-time high.
The tariffs came with an unforeseen versatility. With the border wall still uncompleted and liberal judges blocking almost every Trump effort to stem the tide of illegal immigration, the Mexican Army has stepped up to intercept the waves of bogus asylum seekers before they reach the U.S. southern border. The threat of tariffs on Mexican goods helped to provide Mexico with the necessary incentives. The flow of cheap illegal labor has been stemmed to a degree. American workers get those jobs, giving further boost to our booming economy.
In the meantime, Trump has been beefing up our military, increasing defense spending.
Finally, rescinding Obama administration energy regulations has helped to boost the already in progress fracking boom. America is energy independent. In fact, America is the world's largest exporter of natural gas. We don't need Middle Eastern oil.
When General Qasem Soleimani turned up in paradise looking for his 72 virgins, back here on earth there was no spike in oil prices. The stock market didn't hiccup. Nothing. Iran fired a few missiles into Iraq and issued an announcement that said to the effect, please don't respond. Since no one was killed or injured, Trump had no need to.
MSM has ignored all of what went on for the last three years, pretending that none of it ever happened. Impulsive Trump has no clue. When there is no escaping from the facts — that all those things did happen — the media explain that it all came about by chance. A series of fortunate accidents which have no bearing on foreign policy anyway. The media's job, as they see it, is not to report the facts, but to persuade. Facts are of secondary importance to the "truths" that have already been decided upon for the edification of the news consuming public. For the past three years the media have seen it as their duty to select (or create) the facts that will persuade us all to believe that Trump must go. Trump is inattentive, impulsive, unwilling to listen to the experts, and ignorant of basic foreign policy principles. The list could go on, but in short, Trump is a threat to democracy, a threat to America, and a threat to world peace.
We are in an information war. The media wage it by hiding, shading, and misrepresenting news that doesn't fit their preferred narrative. It's obvious. People can see it. As a result, only 13% of Americans say they have "a great deal" of trust in the media. Trump understands this and plays to media prejudices. They want impulsive? Trump gives them impulsive. He is our star player in the information war. He has been masterful in his use of Twitter, with an uncanny ability to goad the Mainstream Media to oppose Trump at every turn, and in the process to contradict themselves, to reveal their true colors, to defend the indefensible. That impulsive Trump. And so the media report. And as Americans' trust in the media slips a little further, America grows a little stronger.
