“President” Biden said July 8 2021: 

The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army. They’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you are going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.

As always, he was wrong . 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday [August 8, 2021] on ABC’s “This Week” that while video shows military helicopters facilitating the rapid evacuation of U.S. personnel from the U.S. embassy in Kabul, it was “manifestly not Saigon”.

As always, he was wrong.

Yet again, America is humiliated by incompetent government and feeble military commanders.

The pictures:

Above, Saigon April 1975

Below, Kabul, August 2021

Idea for the government: How about appointing military commanders who know how to win wars rather than concern themselves with critical race theory?

The Taliban is approaching Kabul. Once there they can stop planes leaving from the airport.  Is there time to airlift US troops out of the country before that happens?  Possibly not.

The Western Journal reports:

As President Joe Biden moved toward his goal of withdrawing all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of this month, he repeatedly promised to keep Americans safe. The latest development from Kabul now throws that promise in serious doubt.

Taliban  forces are pushing ever closer to the capital city of Afghanistan. The situation has deteriorated so rapidly that the Kabul International Airport is now the only viable way out of the city.

For many Afghan citizens, flying is preferable to staying put ahead of the impending Taliban takeover. The AP reported that every flight on Afghan airlines Ariana and Kam Air is booked solid for at least a week.

Previously, there were plenty of road routes out of Kabul. But the Taliban is now within miles of the city.

It’s not just Afghan citizens who must rely on the airport as their only lifeline, but also American troops sent to evacuate staff from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

The Bagram Air Base once served as a hub for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. But that base was abandoned as Biden pushed for a full withdrawal from the country by Aug. 31.

Despite repeated warnings about the potential consequences of pulling troops out of Afghanistan, Biden insisted the Afghan government would be able to hold off the Taliban.

“The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely,” Biden said on July 8.  

The “likelihood is unlikely”. Bidenspeak! Well, the likelihood is now likely to be likely.

The Taliban is well on its way to “overrunning everything” due to the Biden administration’s poor handling of the situation.

Biden himself tacitly admitted his mistake by sending 3,000 American troops back into Afghanistan this week.

Update: 5,000 troops.

It is entirely possible for the Taliban to sabotage movement into and out of the country.

If the insurgents are able to halt travel from the airport, they will have effectively trapped American forces in Afghanistan.

Biden’s handling of the conflict in Afghanistan has been disastrous from the start, and the consequences of his missteps are now becoming clear.

The report says that if American troops are stuck in Afghanistan, unable to be airlifted out, the Taliban “most likely would not kill those troops”.

Why is it “most likely” that they will not kill them?

Afghan army soldiers surrendered to the Taliban on the understanding that they will not be killed, and as soon as they were unarmed, the Taliban shot them dead – as even CNN reports.

The US soldiers would fight, of course.

Even so, this disaster is likely to get worse.

*

Update: The Taliban have reached Kabul.

Debkafile reports:

A few minutes after entering the outskirts of Kabul on Sunday, Aug. 15, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheed said his forces await a “peaceful transfer of the city”.

Afghan president Ashraf Ghani is in emergency talks with US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad as US staff exit the embassy by helicopter.

The Taliban statement said they have “no plans to take the city by force” and no intention of “taking revenge” against those serving in the Afghan government or military.

And the Taliban are famous for keeping their word?

*

What does stupid Joe Biden think his 5,000 soldiers can do other than get stranded in a barbarous land at the mercy of savages? 

The twenty year war waged in Afghanistan by the combined armies of some of the militarily strongest countries in the world, led by America the strongest of all, against fanatical Muslim savages banded together as “the Taliban”, is over. 

The savages have won.  

From the Daily Mail today (August 14, 2021):

The Taliban seized its 17th major city on Friday as they raced to take full control of Afghanistan and inched closer to Kabul, with the main settlement in Logar province – just 40 miles from the capital – falling to the militants.

The blitz through Afghanistan’s southern heartland means the insurgents now hold half of the country’s 34 provincial capitals and control more than two-thirds of the nation – weeks before the U.S. plans to fully withdraw.

As Kabul looks to be on the brink of being taken by the Taliban, fears have also been raised of a refugee crisis and a rollback of gains in human rights. Some 400,000 civilians have been forced from their homes since the beginning of the year, 250,000 of them since May.

The loss of Helmand’s provincial capital of Kandahar in the past 24 hours comes after years of toil and blood spill by American, British and allied NATO forces.

Both Britain and the United States will deploy thousands of troops to evacuate their citizens from the capital city Kabul, which could fall within days as the Taliban continue their march to seize it from the [useless] government.

The defeat of America and its NATO allies by Afghan savages is perilous for the world.

From Debkafile:

The Taliban’s regaining of power in Afghanistan bodes a shift in the balance of power on the Indian subcontinent and the revival the terrorist threat to the Mid-East.

The return of Taliban to Kabul will mean the reinstatement of al Qaeda and Islamic State terrorists in their old lairs.

Yet the “Biden” administration is still denying that it has capitulated to the Taliban in Afghanistan!

From the Daily Mail:

DoD spokesman Baghdad Bob John Kirby said on Friday that the Pentagon does not believe Kabul is under imminent threat from the rapid Taliban advance.

Could America have won the war?

Who is most to blame for the defeat?

Could a withdrawal have been better managed?

What lessons for the future might be taken from this enormous fiasco, so costly in lives and money?

Islam is an appalling religion. By far the worst of the big ones.

It is savagely cruel in both theory and practice.

Now that the fanatical Taliban sect is taking complete power over Afghanistan, advancing daily as the US military withdraws from the country, Afghan women will be slaves, downtrodden, exploited, abused, killed at the whim of men or by Islamic law, which prescribes agonizing methods of execution. They can be easily divorced and abandoned. Their children can be taken from them. They will be denied education and medical treatment. (They may not be treated by male doctors, and will not be allowed to train as doctors.) They may not go to work outside their homes, so if they are divorced or widowed and have no male relations to earn money to keep them, they are sentenced to death by starvation.

Afghan women who have been working with the American army will be put to death.

Consider this story of one brave strong American woman trying to save one Afghan woman.

Phyllis Chesler tells her story at the excellent site of Steven Emerson, The Investigative Project on Terrorism:

I have been on email with this one women in Kabul both day and night.

“After international forces leave Afghanistan,” she wrote, “my life will be in danger so I once more kindly request you to save my life. Their withdrawing will be life threatening for all those women and girls who worked with international organizations and were social activists. I am one of those girls.”

Few single Afghan women will leave with smugglers on their own. And for good reason. Smugglers will probably rape, rob, and abandon a woman. Life in refugee camps is similarly dangerous. The only safe way an Afghan woman can leave at this point—and with her family’s blessing—would be on a military transport with someone waiting to receive her, and a process in place so that she can live and work while she applies for political asylum. This is the only route which does not require the almost impossible-to-obtain special or America-related visa. If one has not worked for an American NGO or the American military directly, one cannot apply for a visa. I’m told that if an Afghan woman wants to apply for a “special” visa, she must travel to a third country and remain there for a year.

There are thousands of Afghan women who have hosted Afghan radio and television programs (as my woman in Kabul has), and who have written for Afghan newspapers. There are physicians, nurses, teachers, police officers, politicians, scientists, athletes, etc. What will become of them under Taliban rule?

Perhaps America and the West stayed “in country” too long. In 20 years, we neither found bin Laden hiding in an Afghan cave nor were we able to extinguish or moderate Taliban warlord values. They are quintessential Islamists who live to fight, kill, and die “for Allah”. 

But, at the same time, the presence of Western military boots on the ground allowed countless Afghan civilians, especially women, to succeed educationally and professionally. They enjoyed a taste of what Western post-Enlightenment civilization has to offer. We are now abandoning them to the Middle Ages. 

What else can we do? We cannot afford to airlift half the Afghan population and settle them in the West.

The moment the last Western military boot leaves Afghanistan, the remaining shelters for battered women and schools for girls will be torched, one by one, as will the women who dared to run these enterprises.

And yes, the Taliban will shelter and train anti-Western terrorists from all over the world.

Does all this mean that the US should keep a military presence in the country forever?

If not that, is there anything Americans should do, at least for the women?

Is there anything Americans could do for them?

Rightly or wrongly, the US  has been ostensibly fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan for twenty years.

Now the US is withdrawing. The Taliban have won.

This means that: –

It will be mandatory for Afghan men to wear large beards and women to wear burqas.

TV, music, cinema will be banned.

Women will not be allowed to work.

Girls will be prohibited from going to school after the age of ten. The doors of all schools, colleges, and universities will be closed for girls. Women who run girls’ schools at home will be killed in front of their families and students

A woman will be isolated if she goes out of the house without a male relative.

A woman or girl will be isolated if a male doctor conducts a checkup. But women are banned from becoming nurses and doctors.

Women accused of adultery or of having sexual relations outside marriage will be stoned to death in public.  

So if an Afghan woman or girl is gravely ill, or if she has no husband or male relatives, nothing can be done for her and she can do nothing to help herself. She will be left to die.

News Track (India) provided this information, and reports:

The Taliban are Sunni Islamic fundamentalists. Their movement began in southern Afghanistan in 1994. “Taliban” is a Pashto word which means student.

Bad days are about to begin for Afghanistan’s people because the US has withdrawn its troops from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s strength is increasing day by day. The Taliban recently claimed that it has captured 85% of the country.

Will the Taliban completely destroy human rights?

The Taliban previously ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Sharia law was in force during this period. Strict restrictions were imposed on women and gruesome methods of punishment.

The Taliban are in high spirits today after the US called in its troops from Afghanistan.

They are attacking Afghan security forces. More than 1000 Afghan army personnel have escaped to neighboring Tajikistan.

In recent months, they have killed 229 civilians. 

Despite all this, organizations and for human rights and women’s safety are  silent all over the world.

The Taliban observe no rules of war, as this video shows:

The Western Journal reports:

The Taliban threaten a “reaction” if President Biden reneges on the May 1 deadline negotiated by President Donald Trump to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan.

Trump negotiated a May 2021deadline for a full U.S. troop withdrawal from the pointless, bloody, $2 trillion Afghan war.

Since then, the Taliban have not attacked U.S. or NATO troops — the first time in two decades that no American soldier died in combat in Afghanistan for an entire year.

This is a significant milestone because 2,300 U.S. service members have died in Afghanistan since the war began in October 2001.

And yet, during his inept first news conference Thursday, Biden suggested that U.S. troops could stay in Afghanistan through the end of the year – seven months past the deadline.

The Taliban’s brazen ultimatum, its threat of retaliation if troops aren’t withdrawn, underscores that America’s enemies are not afraid of bumbling senile Biden. China, Russia, migrants in Central America, and our foes in the Middle East see Biden’s doddering frailty clearly. His weakness sends a message to the world that the U.S. is severely compromised. And this endangers all Americans. 

The United Nations MUST be abolished. 

It is evil and it does evil. Nothing but evil.

This organization is the most blatant hypocrite of all the hypocritical institutions in the world. More so even than the churches. And though hypocrisy is, as La Rochefoucauld said, the “tribute vice pays to virtue”, this hypocrite’s continued existence is an insult to the entire human race.

Hypocrisy House in Turtle Bay, N.Y.

Judith Bergman writes at Gatestone:

As accusations of “institutional racism” in organizations, professions, universities and cultural institutions continue to make the headlines, no one is calling out the institutional racism of the United Nations (UN).

What is institutional racism? The first entry on Google tells you, “Institutional racism is a form of racism that is embedded as normal practice within society or an organization”.

If you google “racism”, a Google dictionary defines it as:

Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.

The UN counts all the states in the world as its members, and all are ostensibly equal under international law, to which the UN claims to adhere. According to its own rationale, therefore, all the member states in the UN should be treated equally by the organization’s various bodies and be judged according to the same standards. If the UN would systematically single out a minority of only one member state to be condemned for alleged human rights abuses for example, while completely ignoring the documented human rights abuses of an entire host of member states, this double-standard would amount to systematic discrimination, or “racism”, against that state according to the definition of “institutional racism” mentioned above.

This form of systematic discrimination, or “racism”, is in fact what the UN has been engaging in for decades against one country, Israel, a tiny state of roughly 8.7 million citizens – with a landmass roughly the size of New Jersey — out of a total world population of 7.8 billion people:

The UN General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the UN Commission on Human Rights have passed a large number of resolutions and decisions against Israel. According to the human rights non-governmental organization (NGO), UN Watch:

Every year, the General Assembly adopts some 20 resolutions against Israel and only 5 or 6 against the rest of the world combined, with one each on Iran, Syria and North Korea. The General Assembly adopts zero resolutions on systematic abusers like Cuba, China, and Saudi Arabia.

The discrimination is too obvious to ignore. There are 193 member states in the UN. For 20 resolutions a year to be lobbed at the only democratic country in the Middle East, which actually observes human rights and equality under the law — but only 5 or 6 at the remaining 192 states, which include major violators of international law such as China, Russia, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Nigeria and Iran — speaks of an extremely ingrained form of state-sponsored discrimination or “racism”.

China, a state of 1.4 billion people, continues to be the number one executioner in the world …  The Chinese Communist regime ruthlessly persecutes ethnic and religious minorities, and withholds from its own citizens the most basic human rights, such as freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of assembly, as previously reported by Gatestone Institute. Every one of those rights is enshrined in the UN’s own conventions and declarations. …  Even though China is a leading violator of international law and one of the most outrageous abusers of human rights, neither the General Assembly nor the UNHRC has condemned its actions.

There are countless other examples of UN member states who do not live up to even a fraction of the UN’s treaties and declarations of human rights, yet those countries are never called out. The UNHRC has not passed a single resolution against Saudi Arabia, for instance, a country of more than 33 million people that largely continues to operate according to medieval human rights standards, despite the efforts of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman to effect some reforms. Last year, the kingdom surpassed its own record for executions …  when it beheaded 184 people. Saudi Arabia only decided to end flogging a few months ago. The desert country, which takes up most of the Arabian Peninsula, also still operates a male guardianship system, which treats women as legal minors, so that they usually can only travel and perform the most mundane tasks, such as applying for a passport, under the supervision of a male guardian. …

There are countless other examples of countries with atrocious human rights records that are not only not called out by the UN and its human rights bodies, but actually serve on those bodies; countries such as Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Pakistan and Somalia, which all currently serve on the UN Human Rights Council. …

Even the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO), at its annual assembly, assigns Israel its own separate agenda item, number 14. In it, every year, Israel is condemned as a violator of “Palestinian health rights” in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan”.

In fact, Israel provides free medical care to thousands of Arabs hurt in the ongoing war in Syria, and medical treatment and aid of all sorts to Palestinians.

The UN’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) “dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women”, also routinely singles out Israel for condemnation for “violating women’s rights” [which it does not, of course – ed], while countries such as Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia and Iran, some of the world’s most dangerous countries for women, are not even mentioned. Not only is there no condemnation of Saudi Arabia — where women are still treated as legal minors, and where campaigners for basic women’s rights face long prison sentences — but Saudi Arabia was even elected to the CSW a few years ago to assist in the task of “promoting women’s rights”.

Regrettably, almost all UN member states, apart from the United States, appear to find this discriminatory treatment of just one country in the world to be completely normal and as matters should be. There is simply a whopping international double-standard here on what passes as institutional racism and what does not — and it needs to be acknowledged.

Ironically, the institutional racism against Israel at the UN takes the focus away from countries that are in acute need of scrutiny — which is possibly the reason for its success. Countries where women have few to no rights, where political opponents are tortured and stashed away in prisons or killed, and where people cannot speak their minds freely, get a pass. At the very least, people might question whether an organization that has made discrimination against one country in the world one of its operating principles — as institutionalized in permanent agenda items and almost ritual condemnations — is worth the exorbitant cost. The United States, for instance, as the organization’s single largest donor, in 2018 funded the UN to the tune of $10 billion.

At a minimum, instead of paying a mandatory “slightly less than one-fifth of the body’s collective budget” every year, the US — and the UN — would fare far better if the US paid for what it wanted and got what it paid for. At present, the UN has long ceased being a force for good [it never was – ed] and is being used, first, to prop up its majority of un-transparent, unaccountable anti-democratic despots, and second, to perpetuate conflicts — largely at the US taxpayers’ expense.

UNITED NATIONS DELENDA EST!

The war in Afghanistan, launched on October 7, 2001, may be over.

The reason for it was to punish the Islamic terrorist organizations which had plotted and assisted the attack on the US a month earlier on September 11.

AP reports:

The United States signed a peace agreement with Taliban militants on Saturday [today, February 29, 2020] aimed at bringing an end to 18 years of bloodshed in Afghanistan and allowing U.S. troops to return home from America’s longest war.

Under the agreement, the U.S. would draw its forces down to 8,600 from 13,000 in the next 3-4 months, with the remaining U.S. forces withdrawing in 14 months. …

President George W. Bush ordered the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in response to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. …

It only took a few months [for “the coalition” in theory, which is to say the US in practice – ed] to topple the Taliban and send Osama bin Laden and top al-Qaida militants scrambling across the border into Pakistan …

At which point victory was declared and American soldiers were brought home …  Wasn’t it? Weren’t they? No. Why not?

The war dragged on for years as the United States tried to establish a stable, functioning state in one of the least developed countries in the world.

Yes, the US under the leadership of President George W. Bush went on pouring blood and treasure into that benighted country to make it “a stable, functioning state”. And under the followship of Barack Obama (follow he did, not only after Bush as president but by “leading from behind” as he put it) the US military were turned into a charitable organization, forbidden to shoot unless shot at, and compelled to build schools and clinics for the pitiable “undeveloped” Afghans.

So then what happened?

The Taliban regrouped, and currently hold sway over half the country.

The U.S. spent more than $750 billion, and on all sides the war cost tens of thousands of lives lost, permanently scarred and indelibly interrupted. [Wrong choice of word, “indelibly”, AP. “Irredeemably” would be better – ed] …

How has the end been brought about? Has the Taliban been defeated?

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attended the ceremony in Qatar, where the Taliban have a political office, but did not sign the agreement.

It seems the Secretary of State was reluctant to sign the “agreement”. The signature on it, for the United States, does not carry much authority.

Instead, it was signed by U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

Addressing reporters after the signing ceremony, Pompeo said the U.S. is “realistic” about the peace deal it signed, but is “seizing the best opportunity for peace in a generation”.

He said he was still angry about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and that the U.S. will not ”squander” what its soldiers “have won through blood, sweat and tears”. He said the U.S. will do whatever is necessary for its security if the Taliban do not comply with the agreement.

Pompeo had privately told a conference of U.S. ambassadors at the State Department this week that he was going only because President Donald Trump had insisted on his participation, according to two people present.

The Taliban believe they have won the war. Are they wrong?

Dozens of Taliban members had earlier held a small victory march in Qatar in which they waved the militant group’s white flags, according to a video shared on Taliban websites. “Today is the day of victory, which has come with the help of Allah,” said Abbas Stanikzai, one of the Taliban’s lead negotiators, who joined the march. …

Last September, on short notice, [President Trump] called off what was to be a signing ceremony with the Taliban at Camp David after a series of new Taliban attacks. But he has since been supportive of the talks led by his special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad.

Under the agreement, the Taliban promise …

… the Taliban promise! …

… not to let extremists use the country as a staging ground for attacking the U.S. or its allies. But U.S. officials are loath to trust the Taliban to fulfill their obligations.

At least they are “loath to trust” the savage terrorist organization.

What will they do when the Taliban break their promise?

We expect President Trump to devise the most effective response. He has made it known that he’s reluctant to have the US engage in foreign wars that don’t directly affect US interests.

Perhaps Americans will never again have to fight a “savage war of peace”.  Or at least not in the next four years. 

In July 2017 we reported and commented on the injustice of a Canadian Muslim named Omar Khadr, who went to Afghanistan, joined Al-Qaeda, fought against Canadian and US forces and killed a US soldier, being awarded $10.5 million in compensation for his imprisonment after he was captured. (See here and here.)

Our Facebook reader and commenter Mike Watson has now sent us this short video in which the Canadian military veteran Jeremy MacKenzie, who served in Afghanistan,  expresses his outrage over the injustice. We applaud him for doing so.

The video was shot when Jeremy MacKenzie was being interviewed outside the venue where Omar Khadr was speaking in public in Halifax on February 10, 2020.

The Daily Mail, which always has the best pictures and video footage of dramatic events, reports and illustrates:

• Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s highest ranking general, was killed early Friday at Baghdad International Airport
• US drone missiles obliterated two vehicles carrying Soleimani, his entourage, and Iraqi Shiite militiamen
• Grainy video purportedly taken by Baghdad locals shows the moment one of the cars was struck from above 
• Iran has confirmed that two Islamic Revolutionary Guard generals, one colonel and  a captain were also killed
• Five Iraqis, including militia deputy-commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, were also listed among the dead
• Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed to carry out ‘jihad’ against America amid warnings of a ‘devastating war’

The attack unfolded in a precision strike on two cars that were carrying Soleimani and Iraq-based PMF militiamen who were picking him up from the airport.

Soleimani had arrived at the airport on a plane from either Syria or Lebanon around 12.30am when he was met on the tarmac by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of the pro-Iran Popular Mobilization Forces [PMF] in Iraq.

Muhandis pulled up to the aircraft steps in two cars before Soleimani and Mohammed Ridha Jabri, public relations chief for the PMF who had been traveling with him, climbed inside and were driven away.

Moments later, as the cars passed through a cargo area headed for an access road leading out of the airport, the convoy was struck by four missiles fired by an MQ-9 Reaper drone.

Both vehicles were instantly reduced to smoldering wrecks – killing Soleimani, Muhandis, Jabri and two others who have yet to be identified.

Two officials from the PMF said Soleimani’s body was torn to pieces in the attack, while they did not find the body of al-Muhandis.

A senior politician said Soleimani’s body was identified by the ring he wore. Photos from the scene show a hand with large ring that looks identical to one Soleimani is seen wearing in old photos.

Local militia commander Abu Muntathar al-Hussaini told Reuters: ‘Haj Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were riding in one vehicle when it was struck by two successive guided missiles launched from an American helicopter while they were on their way from the arrivals hall on the road that leads out of Baghdad Airport.’

He said the second vehicle was carrying bodyguards from the PMF and was hit by one rocket.

Brilliant intelligence work! Marvelous precision bombing!

See more pictures and video of the moment the world’s top terrorist died here.

Will the Iranians now launch a “devastating war” ? Do they have someone to lead it? Can they afford it? Will the Iranian people support it?

Kenneth R. Timmerman writes at Front Page:

The killing of Iranian terror-meister Qassem Suleymani in a targeted U.S. air strike in Baghdad on Thursday will have a dramatic impact on Iran’s ability to conduct oversea terrorist operations and the stability of the Iranian regime.

But the real impact, one can legitimately wager, will be quite different from what you’ve been hearing so far from most of the U.S. and international media.

Rather than engendering some massive Iranian “retaliation,” as many talking heads have been warning, I believe this strike will throw the Iranian regime back on its heels, as wannabe successors contemplate their careers vaporizing in a U.S. drone strike and Iran’s civilian leaders fret that they have been exposed as emperors without clothes.

Put simply, the aura of the Iranian regime’s invincibility is over.

They have pushed us and our allies repeatedly, and have been encouraged by the modest response from U.S. political and military leaders until now.

But with this strike, the gloves are off. And the leadership in Tehran – and more importantly, the people of Iran – can see it.

Suleymani was not some run-of-the-mill terrorist. He was worst of the worst; a man with more blood on his hands than even Osama bin Laden. Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan, 9/11, Benghazi: all of them were his doing.

He was responsible for all those horrors? The accusation needs some explaining. But it is true that he was the most powerful Islamic terrorist of them all.

He was also the most respected and the only charismatic military leader to have emerged since the 1979 Islamist revolution in Iran.

No other leader in Iran today even comes close to Suleymani for sheer star power.

This is a huge loss for the Tehran regime; bigger, indeed, than if the Supreme Leader himself (who actually is a nobody) died or was killed. …

We have two historical parallels to compare to Thursday’s events: Operation Praying Mantis in April 1988, when U.S. naval forces sank 1/3 of the Iranian navy in a matter of hours after repeatedly catching them dispersing naval mines against international oil tankers in the Persian Gulf; and the presumed Israeli assassination of Iranian-Lebanese terrorist Imad Mugniyeh in Damascus in February 2008.

In both cases, we were told Iran and their proxies were going to counter-attack with devastating lethality. Hundreds of Americans and Israelis were going to die. Thousands! The entire region was going to explode.

In the end what happened? Absolutely nothing.

That’s what I predict here as well.

The Iranians have been lulled into thinking they can act with impunity in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

Finally, the United States has drawn a firm hard line on their bad behavior.

This is exactly what we needed to do.

I believe the Iranian people will draw the obvious conclusion that this once powerful regime has feet of clay. Expect bigger anti-regime protests inside Iran in the coming weeks, and popular revolts against Iranian interference in Lebanon and Iraq as well.

To me, the biggest question remains: is President Trump ready for the revolution he has unleashed? With this single act, the United States has set in motion big historical forces for positive change. Are we prepared to help the forces of freedom against tyranny and oppression?

We wait to see. We have come to expect that the President’s decision will be the right one.