Unconditional Surrender: When Wars Are Fought to Win
“There are decades where nothing happens,” Vladimir Lenin is supposed to have said (but didn’t), “and there are weeks where decades happen.” Welcome to the beginning of March, Anno Domini 2026.
One week ago, on February 28, the United States and Israel commenced an attack on Iran. At first, it seemed to be merely a ramped-up continuation of Operation Midnight Hammer, the raid conducted last June when the United States, following up on Israel’s preliminary attacks, destroyed (“completely and totally obliterated”) three key nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. It was an extraordinary operation, in which four B-2 bombers, having flown for 30 hours from the United States, mounted an astonishing precision strike with fourteen 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, together with submarine-fired Tomahawk cruise missiles.
But Midnight Hammer was merely a preliminary salvo compared to Epic Fury, the pulverizing assault that the United States and Israel (under the name “Roaring Lion”) launched last Saturday. The world has not seen anything like this since 1945, when the United States and its allies crushed Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Having learned from the aftermath of the Great War that armistice is often but another name for false victory, President Trump adopted as his motto the phrase that definitively ended World War II: “unconditional surrender.”
Trump understands, as so many “experts” have failed to understand, that the object of armed conflict is to win. So often in recent decades, the United States has embarked on war, or warlike activity, with no plan for victory. Early on in the War on Terror, for example, the U.S. located Mullah Omar, the Taliban head honcho who coddled al-Qaeda, in Afghanistan. The American forces were not, however, allowed simply to take him out. Restrictive rules of engagement required them to wire back to Washington to ask permission. By the time the proper authorities could answer, it was too late. Omar had vanished back into some unknown cave.
There is nothing like that happening now. Within just four or five days, virtually all of Iran’s senior leadership has been eliminated. Then its replacements were eliminated. “Their army is gone,” President Trump said a few days ago. “Their navy is gone. Their communications are gone. Their leaders are gone. . . . Their Air Force is wiped out. . . . They have 32 ships. All 32 are at the bottom of the ocean. Other than that,” he quipped, “they’re doing very well!”
The assault is not just continuing; it is ramping up. Just a few days ago, Israel destroyed a massive underground complex in the center of Tehran from which the (late) Supreme Leader Khamenei had planned to conduct the war. As retired Lt. General Keith Kellogg told Fox News, President Trump is “going after everything. . . . There’s a huge target list out there, and there’s no restrictions.” Kellogg, noting that he had never seen an operation like this, said that it’s not “whack a mole” but “whack a mullah. . . . This is a massive win for the United States.”
It’s also a massive win for the Iranian people. Just a week ago, the populace was cowed by the mullahs, their immoral “morality” police, and the murderous Basij thugs who terrorized the population. Remember, in January, they maimed and murdered tens of thousands of protesters. Tens of thousands. Now, a popular game in Iran is sneaking up behind Islamic regime clerics and knocking off their turbans. I like to see it. Around the world, exiled Iranians—often alongside Israelis and other Jews—are demonstrating in favor of President Trump. In London, a group of Iranians held a vigil, replete with candles and singing of the American national anthem, to honor the six American troops killed in Kuwait by an Iranian drone strike.
Ad
In calling for unconditional surrender, Trump is seeking not just regime change. He seeks the destruction of the Islamic regime that has held Iran in its fearsome grip since 1979, when the Ayatollah Khomeini flew in from Paris to commence his theocratic reign of terror. Richard Falk, writing in The New York Times, cheered the event, predicting that Khomeini would show the world what “a genuine Islamic government can do.” I agree that Khomeini did just that. But I reckon that all the bodies he had hung from cranes did not exactly fulfill Falk’s expectations.
Just a few days after 9/11, when Muslim fanatics slaughtered nearly 3,000 Americans, George Bush told the world that the word “Islam” meant peace. In fact, it means “submission,” a bitter truth that the Iranian people have had to learn these past 47 years. Thanks to Donald Trump, that horrible misogynistic death cult is finally coming to an end. Iran will soon be free from those turban-headed murderous perverts. Lebanon may soon be free as well. A story on X reports that Lebanon’s government has just banned all Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps activities inside Lebanon. This means that Hezbollah, one of Iran’s chief terrorist proxies, is on its way out. Ditto for Hamas and the Houthis.
Meanwhile, halfway around the world in the Western Hemisphere, the Communist dictatorship in Cuba is entering its final days. The daring extraction of Nicolás Maduro from Caracas at the beginning of January cut off Cuba’s supply of oil. Most of the island has been without power for days. Riots have erupted in Havana. “Down with Communism” is the refrain. On Thursday, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said that he is open to talks with the United States on “any issue” in order to build “a civilized relationship between neighbors” that is “mutually beneficial.” In Costa Rica, President-elect Laura Fernández says that she wants to work with the Trump administration to confront organized crime in order to avoid becoming ridden with drug cartels in the way Mexico has been. “Mexico, for me, is a reference point for where we don’t want to end up.” As I write, Trump is meeting in Miami with El Salvador president Nayib Bukele, Argentina president Javier Milei, and other Latin American leaders at the Shield of the Americas ceremony. The goal? First, to crush the drug cartels that have been poisoning Americans for years. Second, to stop the flow of illegal immigration to the United States. Third, to work together to forge mutually beneficial commercial and security relationships.
It is difficult to keep up with Donald Trump’s dizzying pace. Since January 20, 2025, and with ever-increasing velocity, he has been stuffing decades into weeks. I don’t think there has ever been anything like it in American history.
https://amgreatness.com/2026/03/08/unconditional-surrender-when-wars-are-fought-to-win/
No comments:
Post a Comment