Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot…Khamenei

Wednesday, January 14, 2026

Twelve thousand killed…12,000 Iranians killed by Iranian forces.  The scenes out of that country are horrific. (Warning, warning, warning)  Look, I know the other guys I mentioned in the headlines killed by the millions and this number is tiny in comparison, but this is just getting started, and this is just in the course of a few days – those monsters had years.  We stand horrified by guys like Ted Bundy and Jeffery Dahmer that killed by the dozens, but somehow when the numbers start to get this big, we are numbed to some extent.  It is as if the evil is simply beyond our comprehension.

What do these numbers tell us?  Well, for one, they tell us the Islamic regime in Iran is in serious trouble.  They have always slaughtered in response to protest, but never in these kinds of numbers because they have never faced this much opposition before.  And second they tell us that their claims to power based on religious ideology is entirely false.  This is a raw power play and no monotheistic religion could justify the wholesale slaughter of their own people like we are seeing here. Who would want anything to do with such a God to begin with?  I do not condemn all of Islam, but whatever branch holds power in Iran is completely condemnable.

But mostly these numbers tell us of unmitigated evil.  This is not a war.  The protesters are not armed.  This is a slaughter – shooting from rooftops into a crowd, indiscriminatingly killing whoever strays into the path of a bullet.  This is the kind of evil the planet keeps thinking we have eliminated, but that keeps raising its head over and over.  We have got to come to terms with the fact that evil is real and left unchecked it can do things that we think are restricted only to horror movies.  Smaller numbers notwithstanding, Khamenei is now a monster in the same category as the other monsters in the headline.

So the real question becomes how do we respond?  The President has made promises and I have no doubt he intends to act on them.  But fulfilling those promises takes care, planning and organization lest we do more evil, not cure it. In the meantime more will die and that will be most difficult to watch.

But make no mistake, this is no longer a matter of foreign policy – this is a matter of morality, of standing for what is right in the world.  Any action taken by our military, or any other military, against this evil regime is fully justified – any action.  Those that oppose those actions are complicit with this evil.  It’s not politics anymore, it is raw humanity.  Bear that in mind as this plays out in your news and on your TVs.