President Donald Trump

Why Are So Many in the Faux ‘Resistance’ Silent on Trump’s Iran Warpath?

Many high-profile Trump critics are fine with Trump as long as he’s bashing Middle Eastern bad guys.

February 17, 2017 | Source: AlterNet | by Adam Johnson

Many high-profile Trump critics are fine with Trump as long as he’s bashing Middle Eastern bad guys.

There are roughly two categories of resistance to President Donald Trump that have emerged over the past few months. There’s the grassroots, earnest resistance marked by mass protests, populated by everyone from radicals to liberals to nonprofits to immigration rights groups to antifascists to the occasional Democratic politician with the backbone to stand up to the administration. Then there’s the Resistance™, a loose confederation of media careerists who nominally oppose Trump but do so often for the most cynical and ideologically incoherent reasons. The Resistance consists of, among others, discredited neocon David Frum, racist huckster Glenn Beck, blowhard Keith Olbermann, and former spook and backalley abortion advocate Evan McMullin.

These men comprise the worst of the Resistance. Their attacks on Trump, such as they are, are marked by Cold War-mongering, gendered insults, career revamping, and a dislike of a foreign policy they view as inadequately bellicose toward Russia, Syria and Iran.

Stop with the purity tests! is a common rejoinder to these criticisms. We must, given the stakes, welcome all who oppose Trump, some might say.

But what use is that opposition when it stops at the water’s edge; when it cares only for Trump’s excesses at home but ignores—if not welcomes—excesses abroad? Consider this not an indictment on the whole of their ideology, but an honest question from a potential anti-Trump ally: why does the Resistance not seem to care about Trump’s Iran war path?