Why are some in our media cheering for Iran?

It is shocking how many people with major media platforms would rather see Iran win its battle to preserve its nuclear program than have President Trump achieve some kind of success.

Thomas Friedman essentially conceded in a recent New York Times column that he is torn, because he doesn’t want to see Trump or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “strengthened” by success against Iran.

Imagine how an American soldier on the front line feels when he hears or reads about this moral betrayal from mainstream liberal figures in the American media.

Both the U.S. and Israel are taking proper military action against a tyrannical and unlawful regime that might well use a nuclear arsenal against its enemies, were it be allowed to develop one. Neither country needs to take that risk if they have the military ability to prevent it.

Preventive wars against threatened nuclear attacks are justified both morally, legally and under any theory of just war. Yet one doesn’t have to agree with this entirely reasonable statement in order to disagree with those who are cheering for the most evil and dangerous regime since Nazi Germany.

Recall that hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of Europeans were rooting for Germany in the run-up to World War II. So it should not be surprising that some perverse America- and Israel-haters are rooting for Iran today.

No decent person should be on Iran’s side or remain ambivalent about the need to defeat Iran’s genocidal ambitions. No decent person should support Iran’s repression and murder of tens of thousands of its own citizens just this calendar year.

But some indecent Americans and Europeans are siding with evil because they disapprove so strongly of the current leaders of the nations fighting it.

These are not close questions. Perhaps it is arguable that some of the means chosen by the U.S. and Israel are poorly designed to achieve their laudable ends. But there can be little dispute about these ends being laudable, or about these democracies being on the right side in their conflict with a tyrannical regime sworn to the destruction of democratic nations it characterizes as “the big Satan” and “the little Satan.”

The First Amendment gives Americans the right to cheer for Iran if they want, just as it gave them the right to cheer for Nazi Germany. But their exercise of a constitutional right doesn’t mean that others don’t also have the right to point out that they are wrong on the merits.

The First Amendment bars the government from censoring Jimmy Kimmel’s unfunny description of First Lady Melania Trump as having “a glow like an expectant widow,” but it doesn’t require ABC to promote such a revolting image.

Nor does it mean that The New York Times acts wisely in platforming anti-American and antisemitic bigots like Hasan Piker, even if it is free to do so. Piker praises major terrorist groups, including the proxy militias that Iran uses to destabilize its region. He trivializes the Holocaust and the rapes and murders that Hamas committed in its Oct. 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel. He has also coyly encouraged the assassination of Trump — unmistakably but without directly saying so — as well as other U.S. politicians.

The First Amendment is very limited in its exceptions. It empowers the government to censor only speech that creates a high risk of imminent harm. But some constitutionally protected speech can and does encourage non-imminent violence, including assassinations.

And private organizations are not bound by the First Amendment. They are not required to platform, promote or even tolerate speech that they reasonably believe may lead to violence. They all have standards that they apply to decide what to allow to appear under their imprimatur.

The spirit of the First Amendment should incline even private institutions to err on the side of permitting and not censoring controversial speech. But that presumption in favor of free expression should not be used as an excuse not to exercise good judgment in deciding which speech to promote.

Consumers of the media should be asking whether the media they read, watch or listen to are striking that balance appropriately today.

I agree in places but dissent broadly.

Here’s the crux of my dissent. We have been lied to and poked and prodded by Leviathan so the Powers That Be could get their way for decades (some would say since the serpent in The Garden). We were lied to about WMD in Iraq, we were lied to about COVID, we were lied to about dirty bombs going off in Times Square for the Patriot Act, the blacks were poisoned in Tuskegee, and everyone tried real hard to justify shipping oodles of $ to Ukraine (even if they were attacked, it’s not our fight).

But on Iran…now they’re telling the truth about nukes and hitting Maine? This nation can’t deliver running water in Tehran. Further, by most accounts, they can’t even hit Germany. As for the freighter, that holds true for every other nation that hates us. Parenthetically, that freighter threat argues more for spending on the defense of our shores, not $200bn on activities over there.

Yes, Iran spouts off at the mouth, and has been since 444 days. So do lots of other nations. We’d run out of ordnance if we took out every two-bit leader who said threatening words. Further, it’s not an act of war to make threatening statements. Otherwise, dopey nations could arguably attack the USA due to Trump’s commentary.

At the same time, Obama’s $100bn in banknotes to Iran was perhaps the dumbest thing he did, and he did a LOT of dumb things. Biden’s cluelessness was par for the course.

In retrospect, we should have annihilated Iran in 1979, and we had a just reason to bomb it over Lebanon. We should not be kind to the govt of Iran like Obama and Biden. Monitor the situation, get good intelligence, build playbooks, conduct war games, and broadcast into Iran on a loop how the Romanians took care of business. There is a LOT we can do. And if Israel, or whatever nation wants to do something, I wish them well (but they’re getting no welfare/free military weapons).

Thanks for the civil discourse.

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