Reagan’s Shadow, Trump’s Moment
Of all people, the mercurial Geraldo Rivera had the clearest take on the Trump-ordered U.S. strike on Iran last weekend. “Trump is unleashed,” Rivera tweeted. “In a blink he has destroyed the leadership of Iran. The headquarters of the Ayatollah are ash. Our half century old humiliation 1979-81 America Held Hostage is avenged.” Rivera’s reference rang a bell with many folks over 60 like myself, whose political awakening began on November 8, 1979, along with the ABC News show, Nightline, subtitled America Held Hostage — Day 4.
I’ve written here how the Iran Hostage Crisis changed me from an apolitical college student to a hardcore conservative.
How every night I’d come home to my off-campus apartment and turn on the TV to a bunch of Third World fanatics outside the U.S. Embassy in Tehran threatening to kill the 66 captive Americans inside.
How I kept waiting for a regiment of Marines to march up the street and dispatch these turbaned creeps a la John Milius’s stirring The Wind and the Lion (I was a film minor).
How all I saw was a cretinous President with a Mayberry drawl blithering about patience and resolve, only to be mocked by the Iranian hostage keepers.
How this President’s wife endorsed the unmanly response of showing yellow ribbons to support the hostages, inspired by the pleasant Tony Orlando hit song from six years earlier, Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree.
How the leading Republican candidate for president appeared on the screen like one of the Western heroes he’d played — and perfectly echoed the national sentiment, and mine. “In Iran, 50 innocent Americans are still being held hostage as a result of an act of war on our embassy. I cannot doubt that our failure to act decisively at the time that this happened provided the Russians with the courage to invade Afghanistan.”
How the intimidated Mayberry President at last ordered a military raid on Tehran, which ended in eight servicemen dead, a helicopter burning in the desert, and Iranian guardsmen celebrating by the wreckage.
Of course, Ronald Reagan trounced the then worst President of my lifetime. I was there at Republican Election Headquarters on my first career job for a local news show and felt the electricity as the U.S. map lit up red like a Christmas tree. I learned about the hostages being released minutes after Reagan was worn in. And I saw greatness on display after four years of weakness and incompetence.
But the war continues, with all its dangers…. It may yet be the greatest U.S. geopolitical triumph since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Reagan didn’t punish Iran for their offense. He had a bigger target in sight, the Soviet Union, which he destroyed. In so doing, he became the greatest President of my lifetime. And the little men who followed him, starting with his feeble vice president, didn’t even come close.
But the worst of them before Biden did attend to Iran. Obama gave them close to two billion dollars and a pathway to a nuclear bomb. I also recall an incident from his presidency of American sailors captured by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy and forced to kneel with their hands bound behind them.
Trump reversed much of Obama’s Iran sycophancy in his first term. He recognized the anti-American undercurrent of his predecessor. He withdrew America from the suicidal Iran nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions. He weakened the terror-spreading Islamic state, and took out General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force. But he couldn’t ward off the hostile forces arrayed against him. He lost the election, officially, to the worst President of my lifetime — and had come nowhere near the best.
And after him came the Worst President of my Lifetime, beating even Jimmy Carter for the title. I never thought it was possible, until the decrepit, corrupt, malevolent Joe Biden took office, and everything went wrong. A disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan that left 13 service members dead and billion-dollar weaponry in the hands of the Taliban, and encouraged two wars by anti-American forces. An open border through which millions of illegals poured into the country. And Chinese spy balloons floating over U.S. military bases like the Goodyear blimp.
The crap ended quickly in Trump’s second term. He closed the border in record time. Reagan hadn’t done that. In fact, he’d made the worst mistake of his presidency in that area — the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, also known as the “Reagan amnesty” bill.
Thus, Trump began to catch up with Reagan in the Greatest President of My Lifetime contest. Ironically, it would be Iran that put them neck and neck. First, with Operation Midnight Hammer — the incredible precise bombing mission that set back Iran’s nuclear program for months, and gave the Mullahs a chance to abandon it. They foolishly chose not to.
Which brought us to last weekend. And the combined American and Israeli decapitation attack on Iran. The first strike — in broad daylight — killed the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and 40 other officials, and crippled Iran’s retaliatory capability.
But the war continues, with all its dangers — such as the death of three American heroes from an Iranian missile attack. It may yet be the greatest U.S. geopolitical triumph since the fall of the Soviet Union. And that would make Donald Trump the greatest President of my lifetime.
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