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This has been a really difficult time for Ben Rhodes, John Kerry, and the rest of the geniuses who zombie Neville Chamberlain recently hailed as “a flock of insufferable sissies crowded around the behind of America’s enemy, shamelessly smooching their dignity away.” Zapping Qassam Soleimani ruined an Iranian offensive that had started with such promise. When the dirtbag catspaws of the dirtbag Iranian mullahs surrounded the American embassy in Baghdad, American liberals were more excited than the old Weekly Standard’s staff would have been upon discovering that it was sharing one of its cruises with a pool boy and sexy gardener convention. Libs and their Fredocon submissives were practically salivating at the thought of fellow Americans being murdered by scuzzy foreigners and the opportunity such a tragedy would present for blaming Donald Trump. This was Trump’s Benghazi test, they chortled on social media.

Yeah, except Trump passed his test.

The Iranians had been getting uppity for a while, but then their punks killed an American contractor in a rocket attack on a U.S. base – and let’s not get distracted about whether we should still be there. They killed an American. We are there, and you don’t get a pass on murdering U.S. citizens because we may or may not have a good reason for them still being there. You get dead.

See, for too long we were asking the wrong question when tinpot dictators dared hurt Americans. We asked, “What would a gender-fluid Oppression Studies major at Yale do?” As I have observed before, the correct question is “WWJC do?” – “What would Julius Caesar do?”

Trump ordered hard hits at five Shiite militia weapon sites, and not with any warnings either. They got one of ours, we got about two dozen of theirs. Like the old joke about 1,000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea, that’s a good start.

The Iranians, whose Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the ultimate source of most of the Shiite terror in the world, decided to respond in what they thought was a clever way: send a few thousand of their camo-clad dummies to attack the embassy and hope and pray a bunch of them got mowed down on camera. In the meantime, wave a lot of banners, burn some stuff, and pound on the reinforced glass for the press’s benefit.

But apparently, no one told the “mourners,” as the austere scholars at the endlessly useless New York Times dubbed the members of Islamic Antifa, that they were supposed to get smoked. They went home with the embassy unseized. Getting martyred en masse is not that much fun when you’re just one sucker out of dozens – heck, they may run of virgins.

See, Trump made it clear he was not playing. There would be no Benghazi II: Bagdad Boogaloo on his watch, and he acted well before 13 hours ran on the clock. Rejecting the elite’s preferred model of craven submission to every Third World cretin with a grievance and a camera, the Trump administration flew some Apache gunships over the crowd of unwashed morons, kicking off some flares, and generally sending the unequivocal message that if those SOBs had a problem, the AH-64s had a 30mm solution.

And then the administration sent in 100 Marines, about a company, on Ospreys as a quick reaction force and alerted the ready brigade at Ft. Bragg to start shutting 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers into theater.

Whatever the opposite of “stand down” is, Trump ordered that.

But there was more.

He dusted Soleimani, who thought he could just cruise through Baghdad to conspire with his militia pals to kill more Americans. This guy had already maimed or murdered hundreds of our soldiers. But he thought he was safe. He thought Donald Trump was another punk like Barack Obama.

Like Hellfire he is.

No one wants a bigger war with Iran – well, Bill Kristol and Max Boot probably do, but no one who matters does. The fact is that we have been at war with Iran since 1979. It’s just now we’re shooting back.

When a foreigner kills an American, somebody needs to die. And somebody did. The Iranians did not expect it. And this rocket-powered justice from above will focus their minds wonderfully.

Again, whether we should still be in Syria, Afghanistan and/or Iraq is a different question than whether we should turn a terrorist into goo – and one I’ve been clear on as far as my perspective. If you dare kill an American, you need to become a technicolor smear across a few dozen square meters of desert.

This could escalate, sure. Maybe a show of force will be met by force in response. But if we roll over like gimps, our weakness will absolutely draw force in response. And we are never going to get every single American out of the Middle East. We’ll always have embassies, business contacts, U.S. citizens with family and Americans who just damn well feel like going there who can be targeted.

You don’t get to hurt Americans. Ever If you do, bad things will happen.

Welcome to the Trump Doctrine.

We don’t want an escalation and we should show restraint where we can – but killing Americans must be a red line, a real one, not an Obama one. If this does escalate into a major confrontation, we need to keep some principles in mind. We need to do more than “send messages." Pain should be our message. Any strike should have a tactical (if not strategic effect). Hitting the arms caches means they have fewer arms, and they got the message. And we focus on destroying what the decisionmakers in Tehran care about: sink some capital ships, vaporize a bunch of aircraft, flatten a refinery. It’s even better when it can support the Persian patriots in Iran who want to hang their oppressors from the lamp posts.

“Proportionality” is a sucker’s game. Our goal should be pain. Screw with America and we hurt you, mullahs. Personally. Not just the idiots who do your dirty work. You and your toys.

Oh, and we should be aiding the resistance inside Iran, because someday – 40 years after that fool Jimmy Carter allowed the country to descend into theocratic tyranny – the people of that nation will take back their freedom. In the meantime, we need to reemphasize that the days of messing with Americans with impunity are over.

So, spare a thought for Ben Rhodes, John Kerry, and the rest of the liberal saps during this difficult time. And that thought should be, “You suck.”

Liberals seem to hate this country so much because it is full of Americans. And my newest novel Collapse (along with other entries in the series, People's Republic, Indian Country and Wildfire) look at what would happen if the left got its wish and got rid of the Americans who work, pray, like freedom and know which bathroom to use. Dorky Never Trumps call them “appalling” because the books aren’t lame – you know, like Never Trumpers are. Check them out!