Let's take a short break from the imbroglio over delivering paychecks to TSA agents and funding the DHS to recall why we need a Transportation Security Administration and a Department of Homeland Security in the first place.

Because if you're, say, a 22 year old graduating from college this spring, you don't remember when there were no lines at airports, no requirement for IDs, no limits on liquids, no conveyer belts for your shoes, belt, and coat, and no body scanners to determine whether that's a gun in your pocket or you're just glad to see the TSA agent. (Sorry, I can never pass up the chance to repurpose an old Mae West line.)

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On the illiberal left and the defeatist right, America's military campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran is being condemned as "a war of choice, not a war of necessity."

I'm here to make the case for wars of choice.

My argument is simple: Delaying wars does not ensure lasting peace. On the contrary, delaying wars has often led to wars more costly in blood and treasure. World War II is the most obvious example.

A war of choice is a conflict we decide to wage to achieve vital goals before our enemies push our backs up against the wall.

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Forty-seven years ago, the Islamic Republic of Iran vowed "Marg bar Amrika!" – "Death to America!"

That declaration of war was followed by multiple acts of war from the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran to the orchestration of two bombings of Americans in Beirut in 1983 to the arming of Shia militias who killed more than 600 Americans in Iraq from 2003 to 2011 to numerous assassination and kidnapping plots.

American attempts to end the war diplomatically failed. Five presidents vowed that Iran's rulers would never be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran's rulers repeated what Ruhollah Khomeini, father of the Islamic Revolution, observed in 1979: "The Americans can't do a damn thing against us."

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Israelis are spending much of their days and nights hunkered down in bomb shelters. But they're hopeful that the conflict in which they're now engaged will leave them and their children safer.

Iranians are doing their best to get by as the U.S.-Israeli military operation deprives their country's rulers of their military capabilities. But they're hopeful that those rulers will soon be replaced by decent leaders.

Tucker Carlson watches this great battle against the world's leading sponsors of jihadi terrorism and calls it "evil and disgusting." He declared that President Trump's demand that Iran's ruler surrender can only be interpreted by Iranians as "foreign troops get to rape your wife and daughter."

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On Saturday, President Donald Trump made one of the best – and, at 8 minutes, briefest – speeches of his career.

The objective of the combined U.S.-Israeli operation, he explained, "is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime... Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world."

He added: "For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted 'Death to America!' and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our troops and the innocent people in many, many countries."

Is that's not "America First" what would be?

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