Is Killing Bad Guys All It Takes?

Analyzing the impact of aggressive policies on global crime and terrorism, challenging liberal internationalism.

For decades, the liberal and centrist establishment has pushed a theory and created a reality that has been put to the test: instead of going after the "symptom" of bad guys doing bad things, they promised to address the root causes of crime and terrorism to make the world a peaceful place. 

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Instead of incarcerating or giving the death sentence to violent criminals, we would deprecate policing and incarceration, and instead of focusing on bad actors in the world, we would use foreign aid, diplomacy, and "soft power" to create an international "community" that would replace the anarchy of international relations with a web of international law and norms that would uplift the third world. 

These theories have been extensively tested, and the tests failed. 

Donald Trump has been a bull in a china shop, knocking down and breaking things, including the transnational elite's fragile web of laws and norms, and they are livid. USAID is gone. Institutions are crumbling. The UN is bankrupt. NATO is being reshaped. And bad guys are being killed off one by one. 

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Internationalists are furious. The world is supposed to be THEIR oyster. How can a "frat boy" like Pete Hegseth and a crass salesman like Donald Trump be in charge of reshaping the world order? It is unthinkable. It should be internationalists with sharp pants creases and lofty theories who run the world!

The thing is, Trump's strategy is working. The narcoterrorists are losing their power. Maduro is in jail, and Venezuela is cooperating with us. The Iranian regime, it sure looks like, is about to collapse. Our friends in Argentina are righting the ship. El Salvador, now a great ally, is incarcerating gang members and is among the safest countries in the world. And the murder rate in the United States is the lowest in recorded history. 

Democrats have been doing pirouettes trying to keep up with the things they need to be angry about, and expanding the list of bad guys they need to defend. 

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Rapists, pedophiles, illegal alien truck drivers who kill Americans on the streets, cartel members, MS-13, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Ayatollahs in Iran are all their favorites. As Iranians literally do the Trump dance in celebration, joining their Israeli allies in celebrating the death of the Iranian leaders, top Democrats are condemning Trump's "war of choice."

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We don't yet know how Operation Epic Fury will change the world, but already it has degraded Iran's ability to hurt America and its allies, given aid and comfort to our friends in Iran and the Middle East, and united the Gulf States, who are furious at Iran. 

Obama's foreign policy establishment and its replay in the Biden administration tried the internationalist approach, to the point that they literally funded Iran's terrorist regime, and it got us nothing but chaos. 

Flashback, August 2015.

Barack Obama after the Iran nuclear deal:

“Iran will gain access to $56B. Our best analysts expect it to improve the economy and benefit the Iranian people.”

That money fueled Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, and Iran’s campaign to destroy Israel.

Not schools. Not hospitals. Terror.

This is what “strategic optimism” bought the world. Good thing Trump was elected.

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Could it be that killing the bad guys and breaking their stuff is the way to deal with bad guys? 

It's a radical idea, I know, but after decades of trying the alternative, perhaps we should give it a shot. 

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David Strom

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