OPINION:
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush proclaimed a “global war on terrorism,” but he didn’t deliver.
Mr. Bush never made Americans safe from Islamic terrorism. It has fallen to President Trump to do what Mr. Bush never did.
Mr. Bush demanded that the Taliban surrender Osama bin Laden. When they didn’t, we went to war in Afghanistan. We never scoured the Taliban out of Afghanistan and never saw that war to any sort of victory.
Worse, in August 2021, President Biden created a debacle in his abrupt withdrawal of our forces there. Mr. Biden ensured that the Taliban would retake power in Afghanistan.
The Taliban are now at war with Pakistan, but that war won’t be conclusive. The Taliban will eventually return to international terrorism.
Mr. Bush got entangled in Iraq in another unsuccessful war seeking to destroy Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which were never found. Iraq turned into an Iranian satrapy.
The war on Iran didn’t begin last week. It began with Hamas’ genocidal attack on Israel in October 2023. Our Israeli allies have fought for decades against Islamofascist terrorism at home and against Iran’s proxies Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has already succeeded in killing many of Hamas’ leaders, as well as Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, but that war isn’t finished.
An Israeli strike also reportedly killed Ayatollah Ali Khameini. Khameini’s son, Mojtaba, was chosen to succeed him as “supreme leader.” His life expectancy is about 48 hours.
Mr. Trump has now made it into a real global war on terrorism by taking us to war with Iran, whose proxy forces are Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis of Yemen. Hezbollah has been active in Venezuela for more than a decade. It remains to be seen whether Venezuela’s new president, Delcy Rodriguez, will ban them from her country.
The Houthis have raided Red Sea shipping and are now rattling their toy sabers, saying that their fingers are on the trigger to intervene in the Iran war. Are they dumb enough to do that while an enormous U.S. force is right there?
Mr. Trump has been leading the war with the enormous help of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has personal experience in fighting terrorists and is directing Israeli forces’ operations in conjunction with ours. The alliance is a huge force multiplier.
As I wrote last week, Mr. Trump needs to do more than just social media posts to lead the nation. To really do so, he needs to give an Oval Office speech to explain to American voters why he began the war and how it should end.
He has had no help from congressional Democrats, who failed last week in their attempts to limit his war powers. The Democrats seem to want to protect the Iranian regime, but Mr. Trump has prevailed — at least for now.
Mr. Trump met Friday with a group of defense contractors to ensure that our flow of weapons isn’t interrupted while our strikes on Iran, and those of the Israelis, are intensifying. Those attacks must continue to intensify.
Iranian President Mahmoud Pezeshkian has apologized to neighboring nations for Iran’s missile and drone strikes on them, promising that they will not continue unless Iran is hit by those nations. He is lying, of course. Those strikes continue. Iran has attacked a dozen of those countries and will continue if it can. Iran may be running out of missiles and drones, but no one can rely on that.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Mr. Trump’s war on Iran violated international law and threatened regional stability. Meanwhile, an Iranian missile aimed at Turkey was intercepted by NATO forces. Mr. Erdogan hasn’t become quiet even after that attack.
Mr. Trump has said that he would accept only an unconditional surrender from Iran. Mr. Pezeshkian has replied that Mr. Trump’s demand was “a dream that they should take to the grave.” Our goal of regime change is weeks or months away.
Though we must be grateful for the Israelis’ help, this is more our fight than theirs. We have to face the fact that a nuclear-armed Iran is a danger to us, our NATO allies and Israel. Iran, as has too often been stated, is the principal supporter of terrorism around the globe. It must be a fight to the finish of Iran’s terrorist regime. Iran knows this, and it will fight as long as it can.
It’s up to President Trump to finish the job, which means regime change in Iran.
• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and a contributing editor for The American Spectator.
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