U.S. intelligence officials confirmed Thursday that all signs indicate that Iran – and Iran alone – is responsible for the crash of a Ukrainian passenger jet that took off from Tehran on the same night that Iran was busy launching rockets into Iraq. While Iranian officials continue to deny that they are responsible for shooting down the plane and killing 176 people, video footage, forensic evidence, timing, and common sense tell you that they are lying. They got itchy trigger fingers and they fired without thinking. Massive human casualties are the result.
Naturally, American liberals have decided that it’s all Trump’s fault.
“Innocent civilians are now dead because they were caught in the middle of an unnecessary and unwanted military tit for tat,” tweeted Pete Buttigieg. “My thoughts are with the families and loved ones of all 176 souls lost aboard this flight.”
That’s one way to put it. The way you might put it if you were desperate to put all of your sympathy and patriotism on an enemy of the American state, for instance, and insist that no criticism come their way.
“Nope. Nope. Nope. Iran launched a missile strike against our own troops, and then blundered by shooting down a civilian airliner when it wasn’t even under attack. That’s the story. This is on Iran,” wrote National Review’s David French in response to Buttigieg’s inane tweet.
Sadly, Buttigieg was far from the only liberal to put the blame for this crash on Trump and the United States.
On CNN, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) said, “If what is being projected is true, this is yet another example of collateral damage from the actions that have been taken in a provocative way by the president of the United States.”
Speier apparently missed the attempted embassy takeover in Baghdad. She also apparently missed the missiles that Iran had launched at U.S. forces earlier that evening.
“No American paid a price for President Donald Trump’s decision to kill Iran’s Qassem Soleimani. But it looks like 176 other people did, including 63 Canadian citizens and many more Iranian nationals en route to Canada,” wrote The Atlantic’s David Frum on Thursday.
This logic only tracks if Soleimani turns out to have been in control of Iranian air traffic control. Or if the Iranian military is so incompetent without Soleimani’s leadership that they can’t help but mistake a commercial jet flying OUT OF TEHRAN on a regular flight path for an incoming American airstrike. Otherwise, this is just Trump Derangement Syndrome on a catastrophic scale.
NBC reporter Heidi Przybyla tweeted: “176 people died that night and now we know it’s, at a minimum, related to the crossfire. Nowhere do I ‘blame Trump’ so back off.”
Well, by saying it’s “related to the crossfire,” you are blaming Trump. Because the fact is that there WAS no crossfire that night. There was an Iranian missile strike…and that’s all.
We suppose these same leftists would blame police if an innocent civilian got killed while they were engaged in a shootout with a terrorist. Except even THAT analogy isn’t perfect. It would be more like: Cops kill murderer on Monday, murderer’s friends exact revenge on cops on Wednesday, get nervous and kill a guy walking his dog later that night because they think it’s the cops coming to get them, and then people blame the police for what happened to the dogwalker.
Sick stuff. Unfortunately, it barely surprises us anymore.
