A Flock of Missiles
Iran, not so far away as to be out of range of the U.S. military.
First, the most important thing. I have long despised the building that houses the Department of Health and Human Services — almost as much as I hate the department itself. In summer 2012, when HHS was harassing religious organizations such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, I would spit on the former’s HQ. I’ve heard rumors that, in the first Trump administration, a priest was brought in to exorcise it. It turns out I’m not the only who hates the building.
Well, that’s it for this week. I guess I’ll close.
Not! Wow. Bet you didn’t see that coming.
On Friday, I appeared on National Review’s The Editors podcast. At that time, President Trump had not yet ordered strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. We devoted some of the episode to discussing whether he should. My view then was that he should only do so as an absolute last resort, if he had reason to believe Israel could not destroy the facilities on its own. But I also said I was impressed by the seriousness with which he was weighing his options. I have no insider information to back this up, but I suspect that Trump decided to launch the strikes because he was persuaded that Israel could not do it alone, that the U.S. could pull it off, that the deterrent effect made it worth doing, and that action could be contained to only these strikes (absent an Iranian response that demanded reprisal). If this was Trump’s calculation, it seems sound to me. Other unknowns remain. But given all this, Trump appears to have made the right call.
The Iranian blow-up (so to speak) over the weekend delayed the publication of my Sunday column to today. This caused a chain reaction (so to speak, again) that also delayed the distribution of my weekly update, which I time for after the publication of my Sunday column. I wrote that column on illegal immigration, and what those who support it, or at least those who don’t see why it’s a problem, fail to understand. One of the things they don’t seem to get: Illegal immigration creates a shadow society that does not benefit those who are here illegally, and renders them vulnerable to predation and exploitation.
That’s all for this week. Actually, it’s not, because whether you got the joke or not, you should listen to this. And this.
Now that’s all, for real.