Have you played that trivia game that goes like this?  It’s Game 7 of the World Series and who do you want on the mound for your team?  My answer is always Bob Gibson, and that’s because I grew up watching him winning more big names than anyone.

Gibson once said “When I knocked a guy down, there was no second part to the story.”  And he also said, “I could be a real jerk on the days I was pitching.”

One gets the feeling that this military operation against Iran was inspired by that attitude.  Yes, our B-2s can be really nasty the night they are destroying your nuclear plants.

What we did on Saturday night was a lot more than drop bombs.  We did that very well with amazing precision.  It was more than a message to Iran.  It was a Gibson fastball to your head to remind everyone that he’s on the mound.

It was a message to Russia and China and North Korea and Venezuela.  Trump will do what he says.  Don’t test him or you will see some B-2s over your night skies.  Sit down and negotiate with him because he can be a real jerk when he gets mad.  It’s the kind of message that spooks manicured college professors but our adversaries understand totally.

So don’t worry about regime change.  That’s not the plan.  As Roger Kimball posted:

Perhaps Donald Trump let the genie of war out of its bottle with his effort to end Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Or perhaps the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, was right in describing Midnight Hammer as ‘a pivot of history that can help lead the Middle East and beyond to a future of prosperity and peace.’

In any event, I think that those who compare Trump’s actions to the “forever wars” of the neoconservatives have seriously misjudged him. Trump is above all the peace president.

Time will tell if he is indeed the peace president.  My guess is that he is because he understands the limitations of regime change and public opinion.  So don’t expect U.S. ground troops in Tehran, but the B-2s may come back to put out the Iranian navy if they decide to threaten oil tankers.

In the meantime, the world saw President Trump like Bob Gibson and I loved it.

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Image generated by AI.