If you want peace, prepare for war.
For centuries, those six words kept empires intact. They built walls in Rome, silenced tyrants in Berlin, and kept the peace during America’s rise as a superpower. Today, they’re more than just an ancient motto; they are policy, and President Donald J. Trump knows it.
As Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark) put it, that’s the difference between the “America First” worldview and the “Blame America First” mindset that preceded it and nearly wrecked us.
Barack Obama’s deal with Iran let the mullahs keep their centrifuges spinning. The regime’s uranium program remained intact, their terror networks well-fed, and their confidence unshaken. Obama’s strategy was one of apologizing for our power and presence and hoping that humility would buy peace.
It didn’t.
It bought more rockets in Israel, more IEDs in Iraq, and ultimately, a Tehran that thought the White House could be rolled.
The Return of Strength
Now the world has changed. Trump is back.
And the ayatollahs know it.
They know this isn’t the era of John Kerry whispering in backrooms or Susan Rice writing red lines in chalk. This is the era of consequence, of clarity, of righteous fear.
Cotton made it plain, “The ayatollahs are scared to death of Donald Trump.” And he wasn’t exaggerating. Iran didn’t dare escalate when Trump was in office the first time. Their proxies stepped lightly. Their generals hid in shadows. And when they crossed the line, like Qasem Soleimani did, justice arrived from 30,000 feet.
You don’t need secret intelligence to know they’re rattled again. Just watch the way Tehran has stalled in negotiations. Or how their media began blustering louder the day after Trump’s inauguration. Dictators don’t threaten what they aren’t afraid of.
The Blame-America Crowd Never Left
But while the Oval Office has changed, the swamp has not. Obama may be gone, but his disciples remain embedded across the State Department, legacy media, and academic think tanks. These are the same voices who believe America is to blame for the world’s problems, because we’re too strong, too rich, too free.
They are the ones reviving the old rhetoric. If we just give Iran what it wants, maybe we’ll avoid war. They think strength is provocation and restraint is wisdom. They preach that bad deals are better than conflict, forgetting that dangerous deals become conflict once the ink dries and the missiles fly.
This isn’t foreign policy, it’s surrender in slow motion.
And the media? They echo the same poison. The same reporters who called the Soleimani strike “destabilizing” now praise Iranian “resistance.” The same anchors who called Trump reckless now pretend the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action worked, even as uranium enrichment in Iran hits 84 percent purity, just one step from weapons-grade.
This isn’t journalism, it’s complicity.
History Screams the Lesson
We’ve seen this before.
After the Civil War, federal troops were pulled from the South to ease tensions. The result? Jim Crow, lynch mobs, and a century of racial terror. Appeasement costs lives.
Before World War II, Neville Chamberlain shook Adolf Hitler’s hand and called it peace. Within a year, Poland was burning. Appeasement lit the fuse.
In the 1990s, Clinton gave North Korea food and fuel for denuclearization promises. Now they aim ICBMs at our West Coast.
Even after 9/11, some urged restraint. But restraint doesn’t decapitate al-Qaeda. Resolve does. Seals do.
History’s verdict is crystal clear: when America retreats, tyrants advance. When America bows, someone else takes the throne.
Trump Doesn’t Blink
That’s why the ayatollahs fear Trump. Not because he’s impulsive, but because he’s immovable. Because his red lines aren’t metaphors. Because he understands that the world doesn’t need to love America. It just needs to fear waking her up.
Trump doesn’t blink when evil pushes. He doesn’t beg for negotiations when terror regimes stall. And he doesn’t outsource foreign policy to European elites who think Western guilt can buy off genocidal theology.
He speaks softly when appropriate, but he never holsters the big stick.
A Final Warning Wrapped in Latin Steel
Sen. Cotton said what most of Washington is too timid to admit: Iran fears Trump because he showed them that actions have consequences. Because he speaks the only language tyrants understand—strength backed by will.
That fear didn’t lead to war. It prevented it.
That pressure didn’t destabilize the Middle East. It gave us the Abraham Accords.
That leadership didn’t provoke Iran. It paralyzed them.
Now the whisperers are back. The “maybe if we’re nicer” crowd. The ghosts of Geneva. The think-tank scribes who never met a tyrant they didn’t want to give money to.
They’re already pushing the next “deal.”
But here’s the truth: Peace isn’t made by apologizing. It’s kept by preparing. Not preparing for surrender. Not preparing for the retreat. But preparing for war.
Because the world is only safe when America is ready to unleash what it prays never to use.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
If you want peace, prepare for war.
And thank God, for the first time in four years, we are.
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