No big deal, just Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican member of Congress, praising a terrorist attack in another nation as a "good thing" and wondering if maybe America can't use ISIS terrorism as a weapon against our enemies.
“We have recently seen an attack on Iran, and the Iranian government, the mullahs, believe that Sunni forces have attacked them. This may signal a ratcheting up of certain commitments by the United States of America. As far as I’m concerned, I just want to make this point and see what you think, 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 — maybe it’s a Trump strategy of actually supporting one group against another, considering that you have two terrorist organizations.”
The "good thing" he's referring to is an ISIS attack in Tehran that killed at least 17 people, which he ponders might be a "good thing" because it's targeting other Muslims. (ISIS in fact spends the vast majority of its time targeting other Muslims, which Rohrabacher either doesn't know or has forgotten.) The premise, then, is that maybe terrorist attacks in other nations are a good thing if it's killing people that, in the eyes of certain U.S. policy gurus, maybe need killing.
Setting aside the, ahem, morality of that logic, the other stumper is the rather odd theory that the ISIS attack "maybe" represents a "Trump strategy of actually supporting one group against another." He seems to be suggesting that perhaps the terrorist attack was a Donald Trump "strategy"? As in, that the Trump administration is "supporting" ISIS in their attacks on Muslim nations?
That would be Rather Big Freaking News if true, and seems Rather Big Freaking News even as a mere suggestion from a Republican member of Congress. The Republican-led executive and legislative branches have gone from a policy of opposing Syria's Assad to a more muddled version, and have gone from condemning Russia vigorously for the invasion of Ukraine to probing how quickly our nation could lift the sanctions our nation imposed afterwards for the act; we are now hearing congressional debate on whether or not the United States should support terrorist groups and plots against international opponents.
That is seriously fucking deranged, and I hope we are all very clear on that. The party has gone somewhat farther than losing its moral compass, at this point—and still Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell trundle on.