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<\/p>\nWritten by Ilana Mercer<\/p>\n
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Qassim Soleimani, an Iranian major general, was\u00a0assassinated by a US drone air strike<\/a>,\u00a0at the Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). Soleimani was traveling with one Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was an Iraqi, born and bred. Al-Muhandis was even elected to the Iraqi Parliament, in 2005, until the US intervened. (Yes, we intervene in other nations\u2019 elections.)<\/p>\n Iraq\u2019s caretaker prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, was furious, denouncing \u201cWhat happened [as] a political assassination.\u201d Unanimously, Iraqi lawmakers \u201cresponded<\/a> to the Soleimani assassination by passing a nonbinding resolution calling on the government to end foreign-troop presence in Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n Yes, it\u2019s a complicated region. And America, sad to say, still\u00a0doesn\u2019t know Shia from Shinola<\/a>.<\/p>\n The consensus in our country is that \u201cSoleimani deserved to die.\u201d That\u2019s the party-line on Fox News\u2014and beyond. It\u2019s how assorted commentators on all networks prefaced their \u201cpositions\u201d on the Jan. 3 killing of this Iranian general.<\/p>\n Even Tucker Carlson\u2014the only mainstream hope for Old Right, anti-war, America-First columns like this one\u2014framed<\/a> the taking out of Soleimani as the killing of a bad guy by good guys:<\/p>\n \u201cThere are an awful lot of bad people in this world. We can\u2019t kill them all, it\u2019s not our job.\u201d<\/p>\n However you finesse it, the premise of Tucker\u2019s assertion is that the American government, and the smart set who live in symbiosis with it, gets to adjudicate who\u2019s bad and who\u2019s good in the world.<\/p>\n The debate is only ever over whether the US government should or shouldn\u2019t act on its divine rights as transnational judge, jury and executioner, never over what\u2019s right and what\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n Stateside, the only inquiry permissible is a cost-benefit calculus. Will the assassination of Soleimani, a military official of a sovereign state, and an avid and effective slayer of Islamic State terrorists\u2014pay strategic dividends for America in the long run?<\/p>\n This is crass pragmatism bereft of principle. It\u2019s currently on display everywhere, even surfacing on BBC News, where a female analyst, an American, was deploying the childish \u201cbad man\u201d meme to outline America\u2019s Disneyfied foreign policy.<\/p>\n This angels-and-demons production always starts with the prototypical evil dictator who was alleged to be messing with his noble people, until the avenging, angelic empire sent a drone to the rescue.<\/p>\n Again, even Tucker, whose antiwar credentials in recent years have been impeccable, conceded that this Soleimani guy probably needed killing, which is the same thing Iraqis old enough to remember America\u2019s destruction of Iraq<\/a>, circa 2003, would say about President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and Ms. Rice.<\/p>\n So, who\u2019s right? Or, is blind patriotism predicated on accepting that it is up to the US government and its ruling elites to determine who lives and who dies around the world?<\/p>\n \u201cSoleimani deserved to die,\u201d an atavistic bit of jingoism, made by Republicans and Democrats alike, on Fox News and on CNN\u2014it holds true only if you believe that the US government is the keeper of the flame of an immutably just, universal code of law, which it is deputized to uphold, wherever it takes-up residence.<\/p>\n Such a chauvinistic impulse is true only if you believe that the US government\u2019s might gives it the right to be universal judge, jury and executioner, deciding who may live and who must die the world over.<\/p>\n As to whether the US government has a right to eliminate an Iranian state actor by declaring him a \u201cterrorist\u201d:<\/p>\n Like it or not,\u00a0Soleimani was a uniformed official of a sovereign state. He was the equivalent of our Special Operations commander.<\/p>\n We Americans would not tolerate it were Iranians to designate America\u2019s Special Operations commander, Gen. Richard D. Clarke<\/a>, a terrorist.<\/p>\n Moreover, if Iranians took out America\u2019s Special Ops commander somewhere in North America\u2014which is analogous to the assassination of Soleimani\u2014Americans would consider it an act of war by Iran.<\/p>\n Soleimani was the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ clandestine and regional operations arm, the Quds Force. Iranians look upon him as we Americans view the commanders of our clandestine Special Operations forces the world over.<\/p>\n With a distinction: Our Special Operations forces and their command encroach on the Iranian neighborhood much more so than Iranians and their special force command encroach on American territory, unless you consider the Middle East to be American turf.<\/p>\n To repeat: The crucial difference between Iran\u2019s Quds Force and America\u2019s Special Operations forces (SOF) is that the former is regional, the latter global.<\/p>\n As I write, America\u2019s SOF, upwards of 8,300 commandos, are engaged in secret operations the world over. Unknown to all but a few Americans, \u201cUS commandos deploy to 149 countries\u2014about 75 percent of the nations on the planet,\u201d reports<\/a> investigative journalist Nick Turse. Expect that by the halfway mark of this year, \u201cUS Special Operations Command (USSOCOM or SOCOM), America\u2019s most elite troops, will have already carried out missions in approximately 133 countries.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf Iran should not be allowed to interfere in neighboring countries,\u201d pondered<\/a> Sara, an Iranian mourner interviewed at Soleimani\u2019s million-strong funeral, \u201cwhy should Americans be allowed to come to our region all the way from the other side of the Earth?\u201d<\/p>\n Correction: Soleimani patrolled only Iran\u2019s very dangerous neighborhood. His mission was far more modest and nationalistic than that of the US government, which bestrides the globe, arming and training foreign troops all over it.<\/p>\n Unlike America\u2019s proxy militias, Iranian proxy militia operate in the region.<\/p>\n As to the \u201cimminent danger\u201d a single individual, Soleimani, was said to pose to \u201cAmerican lives\u201d: Arrayed against the veracity of the intelligence to that effect are Republican Sens. Mike Lee and Rand Paul. They characterized Wednesday\u2019s intel briefing as positively \u201cinsulting\u201d; \u201cthe worst briefing\u201d they had received.<\/p>\n No wonder. The intelligence was produced and pushed by the same spooks who\u2019ve been agitating against President Trump and all vestiges of his original \u201cAmerica First\u201d plank.<\/p>\n The intel justification for the Soleimani assassination came from the same intelligence community that cooked up the anti-Trump Russia monomania<\/a> and the WMD-in-Iraq casus belli<\/a>.<\/p>\n These disgraced sources now insist that Soleimani was planning future, precision strikes\u2014nefarious atrocities against US soldiers\u2014and, therefore, needed to be dispatched right away.<\/p>\n However, other\u00a0more credible sources, including Rand Paul\u2019s dad,<\/a> allude to Soleimani\u2019s involvement in a diplomatic mission which was underway between Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and would have cut out the US as middleman.<\/p>\n Skepticism aside, when we accept US state aggression based on iffy, prior-restraint arguments, then aggress we must ad absurdum<\/em>. Consider: Between 1975 and 2015, Saudi Arabian Sunnis murdered 2369 Americans<\/a> in the homeland, to Iran\u2019s zero. When it comes to the lives of American civilians, at least in recent decades, the Saudis (Trump\u2019s new BFFs), not the Iranians, have blood on their hands.<\/p>\n Based on the erroneous prior-restraint reasoning, and our putative, divine American rights as judge, jury and executioner\u2014we could confine all Saudi-Arabian Sunnis to camps, for the purpose of \u201creeducation.\u201d It\u2019s what China is doing to its Muslim minority<\/a>.<\/p>\n Preposterous!<\/p>\n So as to survive the onslaught of the Sunni fundamentalist majority, the endangered Alawite minority in Syria has formed an alliance with Shia Iran, also a marginalized minority within the Ummah. The Shia-Alawite alliance has been good for Christians in Syria<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Saudi Arabia doesn\u2019t give a dried camel\u2019s hump about Christians or American casualties. They have managed to skillfully enlist the West in a proxy Sunni-Shia religious war, also Riyadh\u2019s ultimate aim.<\/p>\n Despite a campaign of \u201cAmerica First,\u201d and much like the Bushes and Clintons before him, the president has decided to side with Sunni Islam while demonizing the Shia.<\/p>\n