Americans Are Skeptical of the Iran Strikes. That’s a Good Thing.

Initially, there was polling which indicated that more Americans were for the airstrike campaign, which took out Iranian tyrant Ali Khamenei and several of his top lieutenants, not to mention a host of key political, military, and intelligence facilities, and continues in a clear effort to facilitate regime change in that beleaguered country.

But polling since indicates that isn’t the consensus. More respondents indicate they’re opposed to President Trump’s decision to unleash the whirlwind on the Iranian regime than for it.

I could give a dissertation on the quality and efficacy of modern polling in an era when our phones are deluged with calls and text solicitations, and we are hounded with spam of every kind. I don’t need to; you already know. I will note, as I noted in a recent column, that polling gold-standard Gallup has confessed to getting a puny 5 percent response rate to its own polling, and if that’s all Gallup is getting, there isn’t much of a reason to believe any polling organization can honestly claim to capture the will of the people.

That said, I think I’m on relatively firm ground when I say that the reaction to the strikes over the weekend so far is more muted and mixed than enthusiastic.

My own position is that the strikes were inevitable. Not because of anything having to do with Donald Trump or neocon warmongering at the Pentagon, or Israel and its influence on American policy, or any of that.

The strikes were inevitable because sooner or later they had to happen. For 47 years, we have attempted to normalize relations with the Iranians based on some very simple and reasonable demands — that they and their proxies stop killing, maiming, and capturing our citizens, and that they stop threatening our nuclear annihilation while pursuing the means to achieve that aim.