WHEN CAESAR BRIDGED THE RHINE.

Roger Kimball recalls what a clash of civilizations once looked like.

Caesar had his engineers construct a bridge across the Rhine. As Caesar recounts in Book IV of his commentaries on the Gallic War, they did this in an astonishing 10 days. Caesar and his troops crossed over, stayed for a few days in German territory, ‘burned all their villages and other buildings, and cut down the grain in their fields’. They then crossed back over and destroyed the bridge.

The point, which was not lost on the Germans, was that the Romans could go anywhere they wanted, whenever they wanted, and there was nothing the Germans could do about it.

These days, the message can be delivered more forcefully.

To alter the image: for the mullahs, the elimination of Soleimani was a teachable moment. It was like that famous scene in The Godfather when the movie producer Jack Woltz wakes up and find the head of his prize racehorse oozing gore onto the duvet. Woltz had insisted that he would not put Johnny Fontane in a movie, despite the entreaties of the Corleones. The horse’s head changed his mind.

There are three takeaways from the vaporization of Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. One concerns the mullahs and official Iranian spokesmen. They are jumping up and down, wailing like incensed toddlers, but their histrionics are meaningless. Or rather, what they mean is that the mullahs, like Caesar’s Germans, and like Jack Woltz in The Godfather, understand that they have been issued an offer they can’t refuse.

It's the nature of people from honor cultures to posture and issue threats, and the most effective way to deal with such people is to let them martyr themselves futilely.  Admiral Yamaguchi at Midway comes to mind.

Our Intellectual Betters ought to know better, though.

The second take away concerns the mainstream media in the US and elsewhere. The pink dust of Soleimani hadn’t settled before they were shouting about Donald Trump having started World War III. How did you make out in World War III? It was quiet here on the East Coast. I am still not sure how much of the media’s hysterical emoting (it cannot be called ‘reporting’) was due to simple ignorance and how much was due to ineradicable hatred and underestimation of Donald Trump. On the world stage, Iran is a bit player, especially now that the United States does not need Middle Eastern oil. Really, Iran is an exotic curiosity, a country with a magnificent past that has been captive of an insane theocratic ideology for the past 40 years. Iran is not the staging ground of World War III, just a brutal and pathetic backwater.

Make that an "insane theocratic ideology" that exports a lot of its human capital. As far as that "magnificent past," well, maybe Darius and Xerxes squandered that long before the First Olympiad and the establishment of the city of Rome.

Mr Kimball's third take-away is more speculative.

The third take away concerns Donald Trump and his legacy. In acting decisively in response to the sighting of Soleimani and his henchman, in acting with caution and deliberation in response to Iran’s calculatedly feeble response, President Trump has showed both that you attack the United States or its people at your peril and that America is getting out of the nation-building neocon regime-change business.

The elimination of Soleimani was not a prelude to deeper US involvement in the Middle East. It was a farewell letter. Always admitting the fickleness of contingency, it nonetheless looks as though Donald Trump will go down as the man who catalyzed the United States economy, who brought unemployment down to historic lows, who goosed real wages, especially at the lower levels, who made important inroads against the stultifying miasma of the the regulatory state while also resuscitating the US military, curbing illegal immigration, and — just now — extricating the United States from foreign involvements that help no one but our enemies.

President Trump’s opponents cannot forgive him his victories. But it has become increasingly clear that it doesn’t matter. Hollywood, like Chuck Todd and Nancy Pelosi and Bill Kristol, can whine and yelp and snivel all they want. The world increasingly turns a blind eye to their narcissistic antics. As the old Arab proverb puts, the dogs are barking but the caravan moves on.

Our President was once a wrestling promoter for real.  Chuck Todd, not so much.  There's still a lot to be determined before any electoral votes are assigned.