The left, and members of the so-called horseshoe right, have been recycling the claim that the possibility of retaliation against the United States after Operation Epic Fury by terrorists is reason enough to avoid conflict altogether and return to negotiations. They warn that U.S. action could spark a new generation of terrorism or drag the country into another “forever war.”
For example, Megyn Kelly reposted speculation that the man who attacked a synagogue in Michigan on Thursday had lost children in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, suggesting that the United States should end its alliance with Israel and withdraw from the conflict to prevent further attacks.
Like many others, she appeared eager to blame the United States, framing these incidents as a punishment the country supposedly brought upon itself.
Megyn Kelly is now trying to justify the Hezbollah terrorist attack that occurred in Michigan today. Absolute filth pic.twitter.com/rJrBA9BA7t
— CyberBoy (@BenHanan_) March 13, 2026
It’s an argument that’s grown tiresome. Political pundits and even some U.S. representatives seem willing to let vastly inferior adversaries dictate American foreign policy, while loudly condemning Israel when they believe it is doing the same.
But does that argument actually hold up?
The so-called “forever war” shaping much of the Middle East didn’t begin with recent American interventions.
It effectively began in 1979, when the first Ayatollah seized power in Iran. Conflicts across the region escalated soon after, not because of U.S. intervention, but because the Iranian regime declared the United States its chief enemy and has spent decades organizing its foreign policy around opposing American influence. Not merely influence from a military presence, but the influence the United States exerts on the world simply by its mere existence. That, above all, is what the regime despises.
In other words, Iran and its terror proxies were the first to breed hatred towards the United States, but why has it continued?
It has continued because when the United States became more involved in the Middle East, in Iraq and Afghanistan, we chose a kind of “soft warfare.” Prolonged occupations, nation-building experiments, and half-measures like under-resourced counterinsurgencies created an environment ripe for anti-American hatred.
Not because war itself breeds that hatred, but because we refused to fundamentally change the underlying conditions in these areas.
We toppled dictators without replacing them with stable, legitimate governments, tolerated corruption among local allies, and then withdrew prematurely, leaving power vacuums that Iran, al-Qaeda, and ISIS eagerly filled while the United States was considered not simply a meddler, but a weak one. A meddler incapable of actually asserting its power, and the same path that the left, and some on the right, condemn today.
Yet their solution is to push the United States even further in the wrong direction. Instead of correcting the mistakes of weak, half-measured policy, they would have us retreat, apologize, and once again let our adversaries dictate the terms.
The Iranian regime and its allies see the United States as weak, and those who take up arms against us believe it too. Political figures who appear to root against American action in Iran send the same signal, and the terrorists who have attacked the U.S. in response to Operation Epic Fury do as well.
They interpret American hesitation not as a moral choice, but as a sign of faltering resolve. It is perceived weakness, not strength, that emboldens them. Our current divided front poses a far greater risk to a new generation of terrorists than a united one would.
Our enemies do not care about morality; they respond to strength. It is a basic instinct any human can understand. A united America, willing to do what is necessary and project that strength abroad, is what prevents new generations of terrorists from forming and wreaking havoc on the United States. A weakened, beheaded Iran allows Western-aligned powers, like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel, to shape the balance of power in the Middle East.
Responding the way Democrats and others advocate only ensures that Iran remains the dominant regional player.
What we need now is not more negotiations that have consistently failed us.
We cannot allow Iran to remain the dominant power in the Middle East, nor should we let it dictate how the United States, the most powerful country on Earth, wields its foreign policy. For if we do, we have already lost.