I came across this despicable statement from Rep. Dana Rohrabacher earlier this evening:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vD1pJR98dA&w=504&h=284]

“We have recently seen an attack on Iran, and the Iranian government – the mullahs, I believe that Sunni forces have attacked them,” noted Rohrabacher before suggesting that the attack could be a “ratcheting up” of U.S. commitments against Iran. He then asked the panel, “Isn’t it a good thing for us to have the United States finally backing up Sunnis who will attack Hezbollah and the Shiite threat to us, isn’t that a good thing? And if so, maybe…this is a Trump strategy of actually supporting one group against another.”

This is just one House member’s awful opinion, but it is another example of the same sort of warped thinking that produced the White House’s insulting response to the Tehran attacks. According to the Congressman’s appalling view, the murder of innocent Iranian civilians is considered a “good thing” because they happen to live under an authoritarian and Islamist regime. He describes the attacks as an attack on “the mullahs,” as if that would make them acceptable. That ignores that an enemy of the U.S. claimed responsibility for the attack and it pays no attention to the fact that the victims of the attacks were civilians going about their business. Based on what the Congressman said here, it seems that he thinks the U.S. should be in the business of sponsoring more attacks like this one. That is sick, and it is outrageous to suggest that the U.S. should sponsor terrorist attacks anywhere regardless of the type of government a particular country has. It is also a dangerously irresponsible thing for a member of Congress to say, since speculation of this kind from someone in his position could possibly be spun as “proof” that the U.S. somehow sanctioned or approves of the attacks on Tehran.

To his credit, the witness that Rohrabacher was questioning condemned the attacks in no uncertain terms and rejected the idea that there was anything desirable about supporting ISIS attacks on anyone. It is lamentable that such obvious truths have to be stated in order to answer such toxic rhetoric from Iran hawks.