One thing about getting older is that my personal data base has gotten much larger, however through all of the political battles and discussions of war and peace that I have observed and participated in I have never seen a political party that through its hypocrisy, lies and lack of constitutional grounding do so much to destroy our republic and divide the country.  I am going to list some activities and then focus on the international situation in the post-Soleimani era.  The Democrats have:

• Weaponized impeachment such that every future president who is opposed by the other party in the House of Representatives is an odds on favorite to be impeached for looking cross-eyed during the state-of-the-union.
  • Now we hear that the House Intelligence Committee may consider the Soleimani attack as ground for another article of impeachment. (This could be an event filled with hypocrisy as all of Obama’s drone strikes are discussed.)
• The Speaker of the House is now seeking to micro-manage the President by proposing legislation that would limit the President’s authority in the current dust-up over the death of General Soleiman. The result would be to contribute to the overall lessening of presidential power that the Democrats seek given their lack of competitive candidates for the 2020 election.
• The left and their media allies are treating General Soleimani as a hero, not the butcher that he was. Of course they couldn’t congratulate the President for exploiting intelligence and attacking General Soleimani before he could launch his next terrorist attack.
  • These critiques include questioning every military move made by the administration. The current media frenzy suggests that Saddam Hussein was correct when he determined that the US center of gravity was/is the body bag.  Unfortunately, military operations are dangerous events and there will be casualties.  But preemptive actions are designed to limit civilian and other casualties.
  • By being afraid to suffer casualties (or even to appear that way) we are emboldening our enemies to try and inflict casualties. Thus, we should blame the Democrats and their media cohorts for every soldier, sailor airman or Marine who may become a casualty.  My liberal friends will challenge this logic only because they know that it is correct and that hurts.  Deterrence is about perceptions and the media and the Democrats are providing the wrong perceptions. 
    • Deterrence can include bluster. They have 35 targets and we have 52.  Have they tried to hit 2 of their targets with their attack in Kenya and the cyber-attack against the national library?  If so then we should expect several reactions in the coming days.  The management of these targets will tell us a lot—whether there is an attempt to manage escalation or not.
    • The composition of targets will also tell us a lot—casualty producing targets versus infrastructure/war fighting capabilities.

So where are we going?  The Iranians are most likely emboldened by all of the political noise coming from the Democrats.  This in ways seems like Deja vue all over again.  The North Vietnamese could never defeat the United States on the battlefield but they undermined the political will to finish the fight.  The current messages that our opponents are seeing is that the political will to fight has again been undermined—not by the acts of the Iranians or any of their proxies but by the desire of the left and the media to destroy this President and our current form of government.

We can only hope that people with reason will step forward as new leaders of the Democratic Party.