Trump Winning in Iran
It was a message received.
Years ago, I was a devout reader of books on the power of positive thinking.
I consumed the works of a posse of books on the importance of possibility thinking from noted in-the-day positive thinkers. With names like the Rev. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, the Rev. Robert Schuller, Tony Robbins, and Dr. W. Clement Stone. And others.
On one memorable occasion, when I was a young Reagan White House staffer, I was in a White House reception that featured, among others, Clement Stone. Stone, a highly successful businessman and philanthropist, had by then authored several books on positive thinking. Among them were The Success System That Never Fails, Believe and Achieve: 17 Principles of Success, and Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude.
So there was my younger self looking across the State Dining Room of the White House, and who do I see but no less than Dr. W. Clement Stone himself. In the flesh.
The temptation to say hello and introduce myself to the man whose books on positive thinking I had so avidly consumed was too much to resist. So over I went, and patiently waited until Dr. Stone was free for a moment of the crowd of admirers who had surrounded him. When my moment came, I politely introduced myself and told him how much I admired him and how deeply I had read his books.
Dr. Stone nodded his head. Then he asked what was the most important thing I should have learned from reading his books. I froze. Not sure. And then?
And then, without missing a beat, right there in a White House reception, he suddenly yelled at the very top of his lungs: “ACTION!!!!!”
Suffice it to say, everything and everyone in the room stopped. All the other guests stared. I was speechless. With that, Stone looked at me quietly and said, “And don’t ever forget that.”
Here we are all these years later, and safe to say, I have never forgotten Clement Stone’s sage advice.
This anecdote comes to mind as Americans and the world are watching President Trump deal with the radicals of Iran. And here, as but a sample, is this Fox News headline of the moment: “Trump says Iran ‘no longer a threat,’ US will keep hitting country ‘very hard’ in next phase.”
The subheadline reads:
President Donald Trump told Americans in a primetime address Wednesday that Iran is no longer “the bully of the Middle East.” The president outlined the next phase of the war, saying U.S. forces will strike Iran “very hard” over the next two to three weeks and bring the country “back to the Stone Ages.”
In other words?
When it comes to dealing with Iran, what Trump is promising is the wisdom of Clement Stone:
“ACTION!”
And action is exactly what Trump is about.
If there is any lesson for a president of the United States, it is that to execute whatever policy is foremost on their agenda, they need to take action. Words are not enough.
Most particularly does this apply to dealing in foreign and national security policy. Alas, America has many adversaries and outright enemies out there in the world. And without fail, they are watching and taking the measure of whoever is the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet.
It has always been so. A serious reading of American history and there are countless examples. But one example?
In the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, any Japanese thoughts that America could be bullied were more than effectively answered a mere four months later.
On April 18, 1942, American fighter planes, led by General Jimmy Doolittle, suddenly appeared over Tokyo. Doolittle was carrying out a vow by President Franklin Roosevelt to bomb the Japanese capital to raise the morale of Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor. History records that the attack, which in fact caught the Japanese by surprise, did indeed lift American morale. And the war in the Pacific went on from there, ending after President Harry Truman ordered the dropping of not one but two atomic bombs over Japan in 1945.
In short, in both the case of the initial Tokyo bombing in 1942 and the final, nuclear bombings in 1945, FDR and Truman took action. And in doing so, eventually won the war.
Decades later, when President Ronald Reagan talked about having an American foreign policy that exemplified “peace through strength” – a policy Reagan pushed with the introduction of the Strategic Defense Initiative (or “Star Wars” as Reagan critics of his military build-up dubbed it), the policy of a serious military build-up wound up eventually wound up winning and ending the Cold War. Without, as Reagan said, firing a shot.
Now, here America finds itself (again!) facing down Iran, a state led by Islamic radicals determined to turn the world into a subset of Islamic radicalism.
To which President Trump, all too aware of the objectives of the Iranian radical mullahs for global supremacy, is saying no.
Addressing the nation this week on his refusal to allow Iran a nuclear arsenal, a refusal that more than takes into account the repeated Iranian attempts over the last 47 years to subject the entire globe to its control, Trump has made it clear: Not on his watch.
In short, the president has taken action.
And he isn’t backing down.
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