On Thursday, President Donald Trump shared a post by former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, in which Thiessen quotes his own op-ed where he asserts, “If there are two factions in Iran, one that wants a deal and one that doesn’t, let’s kill the ones who don’t want a deal.”
“This is the most vile, wicked, and unAmerican behavior I've seen in my adult lifetime,” responded former U.S. military officer and whistleblower Daniel Davis, who rose to prominence after exposing the illegal actions of the U.S. military in Afghanistan. “This is a profound absence of morality, gross violation of any laws that have ever existed, and puts us on the same mental plane as some of the early followers of Adolf Hitler.”
Davis emphasized that he wasn’t exaggerating, saying that even “vile Hitler” didn't kill negotiators.
“And if you think this kill-them-all mentality will be limited to Iranian negotiators, you are fooling yourself,” wrote Davis, “Once a leader has so dehumanized his opponents that you can callously call for them to be murdered for the ‘crime’ of not agreeing to your terms (i.e., not surrendering), there will be nso lower inhibition to killing larger and larger numbers of people who don't submit.”
Dismissing any suggestion that the op-ed reflected Thiessen’s opinion rather than Trump’s, Davis points out that Trump followed up with a second post where he agreed that the “murderous idea” was "Very True!!!" — ”so he is fully on board with the mentality.” This kind of behavior, argues Davis, cannot be dismissed, and it is “time to stand up for whatever is left of our morality and categorically declare that this is beyond the pale and condemn both Thiessen and the president for sharing such reprehensible views.”
Davis says that he will be watching how Christians respond in particular, asserting, “If they *yet again* give him a moral pass for the indefensible, then they can no longer claim to be a Christian, as this violates every tenet in the Bible.”
This is largely a reference to Trump’s ongoing beef with the Pope, whom the president began attacking due to the Vatican’s criticism of the war. While some Trump loyalists shrugged off such behavior, many began accusing him of being the antichrist after he posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus, which Christians widely condemned as blasphemous.
For Davis, Trump’s endorsement of killing negotiators is a straightforward affront to morality: “We're not talking about two combatants fighting it out on a battlefield, this is about us declaring our desire to murder non-combatants who dare to refuse to obey our demands for unconditional surrender.”
