Mayor Pete, as he likes to be called, who has led the cry that Iran's shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner using a Russian missile is somehow the fault of an American president, Donald J. Trump, is among those who say it was "collateral damage" resulting from Trump trashing the flawed and unworkable Iran nuclear deal and his zapping of terrorist Quds Force commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

Knowing that Democrats obey Rahm Emanuel's famous observation that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, Mayor Pete wasted no time attaching his name to the slander that the 176 innocents aboard the Ukrainian plane would be alive today were it not for Donald Trump's insistence that Iran not get a nuclear weapon with which to annihilate the Jewish state of Israel:

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg suggested Thursday that the United States bears some of the blame for the Iranian military shooting down a commercial airliner while it was at the same time firing ballistic missiles at an Iraqi military base that houses American troops. "Innocent civilians are now dead because they were caught in the middle of an unnecessary and unwanted military tit for tat," Buttigieg tweeted. "My thoughts are with the families and loved ones of all 176 souls lost aboard this flight."

Buttigieg may not have noticed, but there was no tit-for-tat that fateful night. Iran was shooting ballistic missiles at an American base in Iraq. President Trump withheld returning fire. Soleimani was already dead, and if Buttigieg thinks the death of the terrorist responsible for the killing and maiming of thousands of American soldiers and other personnel was unwanted and unnecessary, then add that to the list of reasons he is not quailed to be president.

Soleimani was illegally in Iraq to oversee the storming of the American embassy there, and possibly others elsewhere, with the result being another 1979 hostage situation or another Benghazi.

No, Mayor Pete, Trump saved many Americans that night and quite possibly the state of Israel by showing he means business, has thought the consequences through, and is not daunted by the Iranians. Iran bears sole responsibility for the deaths of those 176 innocents, just as Iran bears sole responsibility for the public hanging of gays, which Mayor Pete and his fellow Democrats seem to have no problem with. While you obsessed over Trump bringing on World War III by killing the world's most dangerous terrorist, the Jerusalem Post reported on the evil that is Iran:

The Islamic Republic of Iran publicly hanged a 31-year-old Iranian man after he was found guilty of charges related to violations of Iran's anti-gay laws, according to the state-controlled Iranian Students' News Agency. The unidentified man was hanged on January 10 in the southwestern city of Kazeroon based on criminal violations of "lavat-e be onf" — sexual intercourse between two men, as well as kidnapping charges, according to ISNA. Iran's radical sharia law system prescribes the death penalty for gay sex[.] ... "The LGBT community in Iran has lived in terror for the last 40 years," said Alireza Nader, CEO of Washington, DC-based research and advocacy organization New Iran. "Next time Foreign Minister Zarif speaks in Washington, the host and audience should ask him why his regime is one of the top executioner of gays in the world." Iran's mullah regime executed "between 4,000 and 6,000 gays and lesbians" since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Iran can do no wrong even if it goes against Democrats' core principles, if you can say they have any. Mayor Pete is openly gay. The irony here is that if he were running for president of Iran and not the United States he would most likely be hanged before the second presidential debate. His silence is so remarkable since he is such a fierce advocate for the rights of the LGBTQXYZ community or whatever the politically correct identification is these days.

Buttigieg, an Episcopalian whose church ordains gay and lesbian priests, has lectured Christians on their alleged hypocrisy and intolerance for opposing abortion on demand and gay "marriage" and believing homosexuality is a sin. Some Catholics have been referred to as "cafeteria Catholics" for picking and choosing which doctrines to obey. Episcopalian Pete must read his Bible through the distortion of a funhouse mirror, at least according to his evangelical brother-in-law's comments to the Washington Examiner:

The evangelical brother-in-law of Pete Buttigieg called on him to "repent" for using the Bible to justify late-term abortion and claimed the presidential candidate is "weaponizing" Christian teachings to promote a false religion. Pastor Rhyan Glezman, 34, who serves a church in small-town Michigan, told the Washington Examiner that he was very alarmed by Buttigieg's claim that the Bible teaches life does not begin until a baby first draws breath. During a wide-ranging Friday interview on the radio show The Breakfast Club, Buttigieg, 37, scolded Republicans for their views on abortion, saying, "Right now, they hold everybody in line with this one piece of doctrine about abortion, which is obviously a tough issue for a lot of people to think through morally. Then again, there's a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath. So even that is something we can interpret differently."

C'mon, Pete — Jesus said, "I am the Truth." There are no different interpretations here to justify abortion-on-demand.

When Mary, carrying Jesus, met with Elizabeth, carrying John the Baptist, Elizabeth's baby, Scripture says, leapt in her womb.

Evangelist and humanitarian Franklin Graham holds the traditional Christian belief that homosexuality is a sin and that Christians are supposed to love the sinner but not the sin. He also believes that God does not put people into the wrong bodies. Graham said in a tweet:

Mayor Buttigieg says he's a gay Christian. As a Christian I believe the Bible which defines homosexuality as sin, something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized. The Bible says marriage is between a man & a woman — not two men, not two women.

Again, Buttigieg's evangelical brother-in-law has a few words on Pete's moral origami:

Glezman, who is the elder brother of the South Bend, Indiana, mayor's husband [sic], Chasten, 30, believes Buttigieg's continual use of Christian terminology to defend his liberal policies is an attempt "to seem appealing to the evangelical community," while also falling in line with the dictates of the Democratic Party. "I think he's just going along with the agenda of the Democratic Party: that if you want to be a Democrat, you have to be pro-choice." ... "What we see is a modern-day Pharisee," said Glezman, referencing the 1st-century Jewish sect that was notorious for demanding its followers adhere to an exhaustive list of trivial laws to earn God's favor. "Buttigieg is a person who's making up their own rules and regulations and, basically, if we don't celebrate and endorse their interpretation of Scripture, our religion is fallible. And that's just not true."

Certainly, Christians do not stage public hangings of gays as Iran did just as it was shooting down the Ukrainian airliner. Pete condemns one but not another. Was that hanging also Trump's fault or merely another sign of the true nature of the regime that kills Americans and wants to nuke Israel?

Yet Buttigieg has no criticisms of Islam, sharia law, or Iran. For your second honeymoon, Mayor Pete, I would not suggest Tehran.

Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor's Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.