Lindholm: Cheney tells radio host Friday that Trump's actions on Iran may be "serious mistake" showing "weakness" that could be "dangerous"

Wyoming House Majority Whip Tyler Lindholm, Saturday praised President Trump’s restraint over Iran’s downing of an unmanned U.S. surveillance drone and urged Congresswoman Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., to stop publicly criticizing the president and pushing the U.S. toward “yet another endless war in the Middle East.”

Lindholm, a U.S. Navy veteran who recently authored a commentary published in multiple newspapers across the state and launched a website – WyBringOurTroopsHome.com – to press Cheney, a member of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, to support Trump’s call to withdraw U.S. troops from already ongoing war zones in Afghanistan and Syria, said “the last thing the American people need or want is yet another escalation and expansion of the already endless wars that our troops have been fighting now for nearly two decades.” 

Lindholm took issue with comments Cheney made Friday during an interview on Hugh Hewitt’s nationally syndicated radio show, in which Cheney criticized President Trump’s cancellation of a planned retaliatory strike against Iran.

The president’s “failure to respond to this kind of direct provocation that we’ve seen now from the Iranians, in particular over the last several weeks, could, in fact, be a very serious mistake,” Cheney said. “...I think it’s very important for all of our decision makers to recognize that weakness is provocative ... and that failing to respond is potentially far more dangerous here in the message that the Iranians will take from that.”

Lindholm responded in a statement e-mailed Saturday to Cheney and to the news media.

“With all due respect, Congresswoman Cheney, I agree with President Trump that it would be disproportionate and a more serious mistake for us to rush, as the president said, to take the lives of hundreds of Iranian military personnel and civilians in retaliation for the loss of an unmanned drone, inviting an escalation that puts the lives of U.S. sailors and other military personnel in the Persian Gulf at even greater risk,” Lindholm wrote.

“President Trump’s eradication of ISIS removes any doubt that he’s willing to act strongly, firmly, and decisively with American military might when appropriate,” Lindholm wrote, “so I believe -- rather than rushing to a microphone to publicly criticize President Trump’s judgment as mistaken, weak, and potentially dangerous -- we should give our demonstrably very strong President the benefit of the doubt if he decides it’s appropriate to show reasoned and measured restraint based on the intelligence and military options he has right now.”