OPINION:
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — Just when you were wondering whether Washington, D.C., is still the dumbest place on earth, along comes Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
In the Land of the Blind, the one-eyed man is king, you see. So, Mr. Schumer is king in the Land of Democrats. (One-Eyed Schumer is not, however, to be confused with the Senate’s “Exalted Cyclops” of the Democratic Party. That white-hooded, one-eyed monster was the venerated late Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, who began his political career as a proud member of the Ku Klux Klan.)
No longer into publicly wearing hoods and robes, Mr. Schumer’s low-watt party is now in a frenzy over President Trump’s decision to not bomb Iran after the rogue nation shot down one of our surveillance drones flying in international airspace. Mr. Trump’s generals presented the commander in chief with a plan for retaliating against Iran, but he decided against pulling the trigger because too many Iranians would have died.
Democrats accuse the president of being dangerous, imperious, reckless and trigger-twitchy. (Oh, and racist, too, of course, though Mr. Trump has never been into wearing the white sheets that have robed so many Democrats over the generations.)
So, let’s get this straight. Donald Trump is a dangerous, reckless madman — all because he decided NOT to bomb Iran and kill 150 people?
These people are nuts.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was so unnerved by Mr. Trump’s maniacal behavior of not bombing a foreign country that she held a secret conclave of fellow Democrats behind closed doors. After a while, she emerged, blinking into the blinding lights, muttering incomprehensible nonsense.
“We know that the high-tension wires are up there,” she said, staring off into space.
Blink. Blink. Face spasm. Blink.
She kept talking about the “high-tension” wires. She did not appear, however, to be wearing a tinfoil hat.
But, still, someone needs to put out a Silver Alert. Nancy has escaped the group home again and is muttering to strangers about the “high-tension wires” that are “up there.”
Yeah, Donald J. Trump is the crazy one. He is the dangerous one.
This is the same insane town that hoists high on a pedestal the late Sen. John McCain, the extreme war enthusiast who once explained the best way to handle Tehran by singing new words to the famous Beach Boys tune “Barbara Ann”: “Bomb, bomb, bomb — bomb, bomb Iran. Bomb, bomb, bomb — bomb, bomb Iran. Bomb, bomb, bomb — bomb, bomb Ira-a-a-a-a-a-a-n!”
McCain later declared that he was “proud” of his whimsical little musical tribute to killing Iranians and told anybody who might be offended to “lighten up.”
Funny thing about the mullahs of Iran, though: They don’t tend to “lighten up.” Their turbans have been wound pretty tight for the past 40 years.
All of this would be comically hilarious except that these people are in actual positions of power in Washington. And they do not hesitate to launch real wars.
Take One-Eyed Schumer, for instance. Today, he publicly frets that Mr. Trump might “bumble” his way into war.
“The president may not intend to go to war here, but we’re worried that he and the administration may bumble into a war,” said Mr. Schumer, trying to sound like an adult.
But let’s never forget, this is the same Chuck Schumer who voted to go to war in Iraq back in 2003. Just like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry and John Edwards and 25 other Democrats in the U.S. Senate. They voted to go to war — only to flip their minds as soon as the next election rolled around and Democrats saw an opportunity to advance their political careers by suddenly opposing the war they voted to get us into.
These people were perfectly happy to abandon our troops on the battlefield for their own political convenience. (It should be remembered that Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut was the lone Democrat who refused to abandon the war effort they all voted for. And, of course, he was ultimately driven out of the party over it.)
And now today Mr. Schumer has the gall to lecture about “bumbling” into a bad war. “One of the best ways to avoid bumbling into war — a war that nobody wants — is to have a robust open debate and for Congress to have a real say,” he says.
Sure, Congress must vigorously debate any new wars, but One-Eyed Schumer is missing the larger lesson from the Iraq War.
The problem isn’t Congress. It’s the people in it. People like him.
⦁ Contact Charles Hurt at churt@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter @charleshurt.
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