Marc Thiessen — Vassal, Zealot And Dangerous Idiot — Should Be Ashamed

“There is no downside to striking the regime,” neoconservative Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen wrote in January before the Iran War.

“Trump has already done so twice, and each time, Iran was unable or unwilling to retaliate,” he continued. “Indeed, the Soleimani strike came at a time when Iran was much stronger than it is today. Since then, Iran has suffered repeated blows that have left it weaker than at any time since the 1979 revolution.”

Has there ever been a prediction so devastatingly wrong and so plainly stupid as this one?

Thiessen produced yet another gem Thursday with a new WaPo column headlined, “Trump’s Iran strategy is working. His vice president’s isn’t.”

Aside from acting as a Pentagon mouthpiece, claiming the military has had “stunning success on the battlefield” by “entombing Iran’s nuclear material, destroying more than 85 percent of its defense industrial base, sinking its navy, grounding its air force, decimating its ballistic missile capability, annihilating its conventional military forces and imposing a crippling blockade on its ports,” Thiessen’s goal throughout the piece was to scapegoat Vice President J.D. Vance. (RELATED: ROOKE: Anti-Vance Crew Turn To The Worst Possible Allies To Influence The MAGA Base)

Unsurprisingly, Thiessen gives Pete Hegseth, “Brad” Cooper, Scott Bessent, John Ratcliffe, and Marco Rubio wet kisses on their posteriors. But Vance? Vance is the fall guy for everything gone wrong.

In Thiessen’s clouded mind, it is all Vance’s fault that we are stuck in this garbage mess — with the Strait of Hormuz still under Iranian control and the war widening to the Red Sea, not to mention the damage to the global economy — because he was the lead negotiator of the June Memorandum of Understanding, which President Donald Trump himself endorsed and signed.

“Vance is lashing out at those with the temerity to point out that his memorandum of understanding has failed to change Iran’s behavior or produce a deal to end the war,” Thiessen says. “His failure has made a resumption of major combat inevitable.”

Thiessen goes full pick-me girl as he wraps up his column, making a direct plea to Trump:

“Perhaps it’s time for the president to take the advice of those who have delivered him success in Iran — not those like Vance who have failed him.”

Pause for a moment and ask yourself: why won’t Thiessen ever criticize Trump? If he is so upset with the trajectory of the war, why would he not call out the commander-in-chief, who made the final decision to drag America into it? And, for that matter, why won’t he ever acknowledge that he was dead wrong and delusional in claiming there was “no downside” to striking Iran in the first place?

There are several reasons.

Thiessen is a longtime Republican vassal, a neocon Gríma Wormtongue. By vassal, I mean he has devoted his career to being a slavish servant of the Republican Party and GOP presidents, now Trump but previously President George W. Bush. All he cares about is whether his calls to war are entertained by the royal majesty. As a speechwriter for Bush, as well as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Thiessen helped sell the American public the disastrous invasion of Iraq. He also helped sell and defend the administration’s “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which in plain English means torture, throughout the “War on Terror.”

Thiessen is also an ideologue, a committed and unrepentant neoconservative. But like virtually every neocon in Washington, D.C., he is too stupid and incurious to learn about and understand the nature of his poisonous ideology and its true origins. He does not realize he is the ideological offspring of the radical Jacobin faction of the French Revolution. Like the Jacobins, modern-day neocons believe humans can be universally emancipated — if only they embrace the right ideals. In the case of neocons, it is “democracy,” “capitalism,” “free markets”. But sometimes, to liberate a population, force and violence are necessary, according to these radical groups. Hence, France got the “Reign of Terror.” Now, the world gets U.S.-led “regime change” wars. (RELATED: Unmasking The Neo-Jacobins Who Run DC’s War Machine)

Ideologues do not care about reality, of course. They do not see the world as it is; rather, they see the world as it ought to be. This is why Thiessen believes he still deserves an audience with Trump, even though he already coordinated with the late Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham and fellow Fox News contributor Gen. (Ret.) Jack Keane selling the president on this foolish war, and has been wrong, over the course of this war, time and time again: he truly believes he is right. He may have enough self-awareness to see that, which is why he lashes out and tries to blame Vance, but he certainly has no shame. He deserves mockery and scorn.