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It must be the highlight for any Roman Catholic to meet the head of his church. So it must have been last week for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a practicing Catholic.

Rubio was on more than a spiritual journey. His mission was to persuade Pope Leo XIV of the rightness, even the righteousness, of the Trump administration’s actions to destroy Iran’s goal of acquiring a nuclear weapon and likely using it as a means of intimidation, or possibly launching it as a weapon of war.

The Pope is committed to resolving disputes through diplomacy. That course would be worth pursuing if Iran’s leaders and the U.S had even remotely similar goals in mind.

Just as Catholics and Protestants differ in their theology, Islamists differ with just about everybody else, whether they be religious or secular. Tehran’s goals also differ from just about everybody else, be they religious, or even secular. Islamic extremists have repeatedly made clear their goal is world domination. They openly proclaim Allah has commanded them to do so. History and current events show they are serious.

Winston Churchill understood this early in his life. In his 1899 book: “The River War: An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan,” Churchill acknowledged the “splendid qualities of individual Muslims, but described the religion itself as a “retrograde force” and “far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.”

This is what Pope Leo either doesn’t fully understand, or he believes his interpretation of good (diplomacy) can triumph over evil. History and common sense are full of examples to the contrary.

The usual diplomatic niceties were conveyed following Rubio’s meeting with the Pope who seemed to get the visual upper hand when he gave Rubio an olive branch and Rubio gave the Pope a crystal paperweight in the shape of a football.

You can’t win at card games or sporting contests if one side plays by the rules and the other cheats. How does diplomacy dissuade the ayatollah regime from murdering its own people who want change?

When Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “Evil Empire” before a 1983 gathering of the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, the secular world was stunned. Reportedly, his speechwriters tried numerous times to get him to remove the label from his speech. Each time Reagan refused. He knew he was right. When asked by a reporter what his goal was in dealing with the Soviets, Reagan responded “We win, they lose.”

That’s the kind of clearheaded thinking President Trump is demonstrating against Iran.

When confronting evil the only successful approach is to make the evil side fear the good side. For decades, the ayatollahs have lied, murdered and cheated on agreements directly and through their proxies. The only way to eliminate their threat and to stop them from killing more innocents is not through diplomacy but through strength and not quitting before the goal is reached. If the Pope doesn’t get that he invites more evil from the ayatollah regime.

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Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book “A Watchman in the Night: What I've Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America" (HumanixBooks).

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