Even if you agree with Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter that America should get out of the Middle East, it's still hard to understand their immediate and very negative reactions to Trump's fatal air strike on Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.

Some of the doom and gloom may come from paying too much attention to retroactive justifications and not enough to antecedent provocations.  Hearing that Soleimani was killed pre-emptively because he was plotting some unspecified mayhem is bound to elicit an "oh, please" from anyone who remembers Saddam Hussein and his dangerous but ultimately nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.  The resulting disastrous war is just one of many cases demonstrating that the U.S. Intelligence Community tries to influence events in much the same way most organizations do: it decides what it wants based on reasons it's unlikely to divulge and then gets the rest of us to agree by pushing information unlikely to be true.

So, it's understandable that, when Army general Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, turned up on television after Soleimani was killed, many assumed that it meant yet another blood-soaked, never-ending, refugee-breeding misadventure.  Even if Milley hadn't said a word, just seeing him standing behind that podium in his uniform might have been enough for anyone over forty with a functioning memory to assume we were in for another round of what Steve Sailor has pointedly termed "invade the world, invite the world."

Unfortunately, Gen. Milley's remarks were so unreassuring that they could have been a parody of a Pentagon spokesman reciting a bogus casus belli:

I'll stand by the intelligence I saw that was compelling.  [Soleimani's planned attack] was imminent, and it was very very clear in scale and scope.  Did it exactly say who, what, when, where?  No.  But he was planning, coordinating, and synchronizing significant combat operations against U.S. military forces in the region, and it was imminent.

Who?  What?  When?  Where?  Petty details, apparently.  As Hillary Clinton once famously remarked, "what difference, at this point, does it make?" 

This brings us to those antecedent provocations.

As everyone knows, Mrs. Clinton made her seething statement of indifference while testifying to Congress about the four Americans killed when the Obama administration ignored repeated pleas for reinforcements against those attacking the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi.

As some don't seem to remember, a few days before Soleimani's demise, the U.S. embassy in Iraq faced a similar attack — a small but not insignificant part of which involved lots of graffiti signifying the attackers' allegiance to Iran, including, "Soleimani is my leader."

The New Year's Eve attack couldn't help but bring Benghazi to mind.  Some liberal commentators were even loathsome enough to celebrate it as "Trump's Benghazi."  The Marine Corps unit deployed to make sure it wasn't were even part of a special task force created in the wake of Benghazi.

And, though the Pentagon's subsequent flaccid justifications for killing Soleimani have overshadowed the embassy attack, as Trump's adviser on how to respond, Sen. Lindsey Graham, reported, brutally deterring anyone from even thinking about mounting another potential Benghazi was precisely the reason Soleimani was blown to bits.  Trump also made that abundantly clear beforehand in several public remarks.

So, contrary to Tucker Carlson's worry that Trump fell for a Deep State ruse designed to push the U.S. into a war, the subsequent unconvincing justifications for killing Soleimani had little to do with Trump's decision.

But Carlson's and Coulter's more significant assumption that Soleimani's death has made a war with Iran more likely is also uncharacteristically un–thought out.

Granted, the corporate press went into overdrive making it seem as if we were at war with Iran the second Soleimani took his final breath.  The New York Times barely waited for the body parts to get cold before giving us the headline "Is There a Risk of Wider War with Iran?"  The Washington Post did the Times one better with the "when did you stop beating your wife" headline "How did the U.S get to the Brink of War with Iran?"  Slate abandoned subtlety altogether and just straight-up lied: "Trump Just Declared War on Iran."

That's just a tiny sample of the establishment media trying to generate a panic because the guy who just yesterday was supposed to be feckless for not retaliating against a string of less serious Iranian provocations finally reacted to a more serious one.  So it may be that Carlson and Coulter, whose jobs require immersing themselves in corporate media dreck, inadvertently took some home.

Of course, diplomacy is by no means an easy business, and it's certainly possible that Trump has taken the first inexorable step toward war.  But to assume so at this early stage is worse than premature.

Not decisively responding to aggression isn't always the way to avoid more.  It depends on whether the response frightens or emboldens.  And, not to put too fine a point on it, there's plenty of reason to think that Trump has scared the living crap out of Iran's leaders.

His tweet to them the day after Soleimani's sudden and unexpected departure from their company was a masterful stroke:

Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!

Trump's cold specificity and parenthetical reminder of that old unsettled score was guaranteed to make Iran's leaders sit up from their prayer shawls and take notice.

They did make a lot of histrionic threats in the wake of their beloved comrade's untimely passing. And, the corporate press gave them plenty of hype to cement the impression that Trump had blundered into war.  But incessant barking is at least as likely to indicate a disinclination to do much biting as it is a reliable indicator of future aggression.

The fact is, as Trump emphasized in a recent speech responding to the halfhearted and perfunctory token bite Iran has offered thus far, the United States is now a net exporter of oil and doesn't need any of the Middle East's.  Iran's military might amounts to less than a Lilliputian gnat's power against Gulliver should they provoke Trump into making good on finally paying back those 52 American hostages by obliterating an equal number of sites strategically and culturally important to them.  And there always remains the possibility of a more limited but probably more effective direct targeting of Iranian leaders along the lines of Qassem Soleimani's sudden and unexpected demise.

Again, anything can happen. But assuming Soleimani's death has hastened rather than forestalled war is, at a minimum, way premature. Moreover, if the nickname the Iranians gave Trump way back in 2016 is any indication, Soleimani's explosive end very likely put the fear of Allah into Iran's leaders. You don't call someone "Crazy Trump" unless you're at least a little alarmed by his unpredictable ways.

If Iran's leaders aren't irrational, they'll think twice before giving Crazy Trump a reason for arranging a surprise reunion with their beloved comrade Qassem Soleimani.

Michael Thau is working on a book about the fake Russian hack of the DNC.  You can find all his work at his website, Aclearerpicture.net.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.