One of Trump’s greatest legacies will be how he blew up a half-century of western diffidence, restraint, and failure on terrorism. As the era of Islamic terrorism began in the 1970s, western countries (very much including Israel) spun up all kinds of pseudo-sophisticated theories and excuses to avoid carrying out the only successful policy, which is killing terrorists — as many as you can, whenever you can.
There are entire university departments, think tanks, media outlets, NGOs, foundations, and political parties devoted to promoting self-defeating, enervating fictions about terrorism designed to tie the hands of the West. We just have to live with it, deal with it, accommodate it, accept the barbarism. Terrorists have grievances. It’s partly our fault, after all, because reasons. There are no military solutions. If we’re nice to the terrorists they will actually help us stabilize the region. The tropes go on forever and they are invented by people who want the west to lose, and who would rather be wrong but appear sophisticated than be right and appear crude.
Trump wants our side to win. The winning approach to terrorism is very simple. Bomb them to smithereens. Kill them off. Decapitate the regimes. Sanction them until they have no more money for jihad. Trump gets it, because unlike so many people in politics, he doesn’t care whether Harvard likes him.
Winning is going to generate a real peace dividend for America. Finally dealing with Iran — the head of the snake — will enable the US to step away from the Middle East. It will send a message to our adversaries that the big dog is still in charge. And very enjoyably, it will sweep aside decades of dumb elite groupthink about how we have no alternative but to cut deals with terrorists. Thank you President Trump.