My dog snapped at nearly a half-dozen anti-American, pro-Iran activists at a Seattle rally, and I can’t say I blame him. He can spot a threat a mile away.

It was Sunday, a day usually reserved for a bit of relaxation before a week of radio and television broadcasts, with a few peaceful, long walks with D’Artagnan, my two-year-old Malinois mix. But in Seattle, even my dog can’t escape the lunacy that spills out onto our streets. We walked by a gathering of the usual suspects, all geared up to oppose President Donald Trump’s decisive action against Iran’s nuclear weapon ambitions. And that’s when D’Artagnan, usually a well-behaved if high-energy pup, decided to offer his own, rather vocal, opinion.

I’ve been working with D’Artagnan on his anxiety in loud, crowded spaces. He’s a smart dog, but a sudden cacophony of shouting strangers with body odor and clothes that haven’t been washed in weeks will obviously make him a little antsy. Yet, as the chants grew louder and the signs waved, my pup didn’t just get antsy; he got righteously indignant. He bristled, a low growl rumbling in his chest, then erupted into a chorus of sharp barks, snapping at the air in the direction of the earnest, sign-waving crowd and anyone who came up to pet him, thinking he was a K9 comrade. He most certainly was not.

And honestly, can you blame him?

D’Artagnan has been trained to spot danger

These weren’t your garden-variety protestors. These were the folks railing against America, justifying the very regime that funds global terror, and, in some cases, openly spouting antisemitic rhetoric and promoting socialism.

One male speaker, apparently under the delusion that he was channeling a civil rights icon, blathered, “The Iranian and American people alike do not want another ‘Forever War.’ Trump is spitting in our faces. We are forced to learn this about the US war machine time and time again. As Martin Luther King Jr pointed out decades ago, and I quote, ‘The bombs in Vietnam explode at home.'”

The sheer intellectual dishonesty is breathtaking. These aren’t carpet bombs on a village. This is targeted decapitation of a terrorist apparatus that has destabilized an entire region for decades. It’s not about “destroying the village to save it,” as another speaker melodramatically quoted from the Vietnam War. It’s about taking out the very architects of that destruction.

Barking at the enemy

D’Artagnan’s barks intensified, particularly when a “De-escalation Volunteer” approached to say hello. The irony was thick.

My dog, a creature of pure instinct whom I adopted as a stray in Mexico (he came here legally, I think), was barking at the “peace” activist, clearly sensing a threat to the natural order of things. Perhaps D’Artagnan understood what these activists couldn’t or wouldn’t: that sometimes you have to bark back at the threat, kind of like what Trump and Israel did with Iran.

If she truly wanted to de-escalate something, she could have started with her own movement supporting Hamas terrorists and their Iranian regime backers.

Another male voice piped up, painting a world where, “Both the Republican and Democratic parties are in lockstep when it comes to war. They both sign off on bombs, sanctions, and interventions.”

This is the kind of moral equivalence that only a privileged few, safe in their Western democracies, can afford. They demonize legitimate defense while ignoring the actual terror committed by regimes they seem determined to defend.

Then came the female speaker, warning of “a global war” and the “recklessness of our ruling class and their unending interest to get the most profits in their pockets, no matter the cost.” The predictable anti-capitalist trope, of course. Because in their world, geopolitical strategy isn’t about protecting national interests or preventing a rogue regime from acquiring nuclear weapons; it’s always about “profits.” It’s a convenient narrative for those who prefer to blame their own country for every ill in the world.

Surrounded by ignorance

One of my favorites of the ignorant speakers came from a woman (apologies, I assumed gender) conflating military action with domestic policy failures.

“Kidnapping and brutalizing our black sisters and brothers all across the country and throwing them in jail, funding wars, funding ICE, funding the police, that takes a higher priority than anything else,” she said. “And that’s why we can’t have affordable health care, that’s why we can’t have quality education, that’s why we don’t have access to healthy food or a robust public transportation system or anything.”

Because obviously, the only reason we don’t have utopian healthcare and robust public transit is because we’re not letting Iran build nukes.

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Obviously, the activists hate Israel

But the real heart-wrencher, meant to tug at every bleeding heart, came from a self-identified second-generation Iranian immigrant: “My father currently lives in Yazd, and the first text I received this morning was a text message from a friend that Yazd had been struck by Israeli missiles… I don’t have words to describe how terrifying it can be to know if your loved ones are alive or dead… The West claims that Iran has nuclear weapons, and they say that Iran is a threat. Last night in a nationally televised address, war criminal, Donald Trump, called Iran the number one state sponsor of terror. Despite that, there is only one nation that is bombing country after country. The apartheid state of Israel has been actively terrorizing multiple countries in Southwest Asia, all while engaging in ethnic cleansing as they work to slaughter the Palestinian people.”

There it is. The blatant victim-blaming, the twisted narrative that paints Israel as the aggressor, and ignores Iran’s decades of sponsoring terrorism. Then claim that the “US media does not actually cover what happens in Iran… accurately… authentically.” What do they want us to cover? The glorious parades of anti-Americanism? The public hangings of dissidents?

Bombing Iran’s nuclear sites was necessary

For decades, we’ve tried negotiation with Iran. Each time, they’ve laughed in our faces, continued their clandestine nuclear programs, and funded terrorist proxies like Hamas, Houthis, and Hezbollah.

This isn’t the Iraq War, where we sent hundreds of thousands of troops into a prolonged, costly ground campaign. These are surgical strikes designed to cripple their ability to threaten regional and global security. This is not about regime change in the traditional sense; it’s about denying a rogue regime the tools to fulfill its openly stated desire to wipe out nations and develop weapons of mass destruction.

So, when D’Artagnan, my otherwise sweet and cuddly Malinois mix, starts barking and snapping at a crowd of anti-American, pro-Iran apologists, I can’t exactly scold him. Some things, some threats, are just instinctively understood. And sometimes, a dog’s gut reaction is clearer than any nuanced, politically correct analysis.

Good boy, D’Artagnan. Good boy.

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