U.S. Iran Conflict

[River]

I like that quote too. Don't deal in death if you can't deal in life.

[Frelga]

Esper Says He Didn’t See Specific Evidence Iran Planned to Attack 4 Embassies

That's Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper.

“I didn’t see one with regard to four embassies,” Mr. Esper said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” But he added: “I share the president’s view that probably — my expectation was they were going to go after our embassies. The embassies are the most prominent display of American presence in a country.”

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I too like that quote. From Tolkien, not Esper.

Sent from my LG G6 using Tapatalk

[Faramond]

That Tolkien quote really isn't applicable here. In the books it applied to Gollum at various times when he was captured and subdued. In general it should only be applied to someone who has been neutralized, who cannot reasonably kill anyone else. That quote is an excellent argument against the death penalty, for example. It is not really an argument against killing terrorist leaders who will surely oversee more terrorist attacks. ( Trump lies and in general presidents lie about war, but even if the thing about Soleimani targeting four embassies is a lie there is no realistic doubt that he was going to continue leading terrorist attacks on innocent persons. )

Soleimani was according to many accounts responsible for the deaths of more than 600 American servicepersons. He was responsible for the deaths of many more middle easterners, and they matter just as much as the Americans killed. He may have been a "government official" but he was also a terrorist leader. To characterize his killing as an "assassination" is very peculiar, to say the least. It doesn't stand up to honest scrutiny of what he did when he was alive. He was an evil man who directed actions that in no way fall under any reasonable description of being a "government official". I think it is highly misleading to call the killing of a terrorist an "assassination".

None of this means it was wise to order the strike. No one can predict what consequences this sort of actions will have. I certainly would not pick someone like Trump to navigate us through the aftermath.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Barack Obama (to name one American government official among many others that could be listed), was responsible for the killing of hundreds of civilians. I don't think that anyone would argue that if an Afghani or Yemeni had killed Obama in retaliation for those killings it would not have been an assassination.

Needless to say, I'm not comparing Obama (or Bush or Trump or Cheney or Petraeus or any other American official or military leader) to Soleimani, who clearly was a bad actor. But I agree that predicting the consequences this sort of action will have. And while I strongly agree that it is scary to have someone like Trump navigating us through the aftermath, unfortunately, I can't think of anyone who would want the job who I would have a lot of confidence in. I admire Obama but like Frelga I don't think much of how he navigated the situation in the Middle-east. I can't think of anyone running who I think would do better.

[Faramond]

Did Obama specifically target civilians? Was his motive to spread terror in order to advance a theocratic state? Okay, you say that you're not comparing Obama and Soleimani, but whatever it is you're doing that involves considering their actions side by side I don't particularly think it's valid.

I have a lot of respect for arguments against the killing of Soleimani that don't call it an assassination, because I find those arguments more thoughtful.

edit: I would much rather have Obama as president handling this than Trump, no matter Obama's missteps.

[River]

The prospect of navigating the aftermath is probably why no previous POTUS opted to take out Soleimani. There are some fundamental differences between killing off a government official vs. the leaders of what is effectively an evil, twisted, NGO. I suspect the prospect of the aftermath is also why G.H.W. Bush did not roll into Baghdad following the first Gulf War. His son went in to "finish the job" and we're still coping with that one.

Honestly, I'm not sure anyone on our side of the ocean has the wisdom to navigate the Middle East. Obama tried to avoid making an obviously dumb moves and, in the process, made dumb moves. Trump's just making moves without any apparent care for whether they are smart or dumb (like a kindergartner playing chess...and yes, I do, in fact, know what that looks like).

Right now I'm worried for the kids protesting in Tehran right now. They could get killed for the things they're saying and they know it and they're doing it anyway.

[yovargas]

I don't have any strong opinions about any of this as I am not going to pretend that I understand any of it but I am confused by Faramond saying we shouldn't call it an assassination. Why wouldn't it be called that, and why does it matter either way?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Faramond, I agree that it is a poor analogy, and I withdraw it. I think that we largely feel the same way about this, and I certainly didn't mean to suggest that I would be as uneasy with Obama handling this as I am with Trump. I may not have agreed with everything that Obama did (particularly with regard to ordering drone attacks that he knew would kill civilians, even if he was not targeting civilians), but I had no reason to question his mental competency.

x-posted with yov and river.

[RoseMorninStar]

I don't have any strong opinions about any of this as I am not going to pretend that I understand any of it but I am confused by Faramond saying we shouldn't call it an assassination. Why wouldn't it be called that, and why does it matter either way?

I'm right there with you yov*. What frustrates me is that at the heart of it, much of our interest in the region plagued with seemingly endless conflict is oil. With today's technology oil should not be the corrupting, war-inducing influence it is. It's old school backward thinking.

This article seems to explain things somewhat: Assassination, Extrajudicial Execution, or Targeted Killing—What’s the Difference?

*edited to add: meaning I am not going to pretend that I understand any of this.

[Sunsilver]

Here's an interesting take on the assassination, posted by a FB friend who is on the extreme left of the political spectrum. And I don't mean liberal He used to go by the name "Red Lion"

Not sure what to think of it, but Trump bullying the Iranian government certainly sounds true to his character:

https://popularresistance.org/the-deepe ... xMQEyWyWj8

Days after the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, new and important information is coming to light from a speech given by the Iraqi prime minister. The story behind Soleimani’s assassination seems to go much deeper than what has thus far been reported, involving Saudi Arabia and China as well the U.S. dollar’s role as the global reserve currency.

The Iraqi prime minister, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, has revealed details of his interactions with Trump in the weeks leading up to Soleimani’s assassination in a speech to the Iraqi parliament. He tried to explain several times on live television how Washington had been browbeating him and other Iraqi members of parliament to toe the American line, even threatening to engage in false-flag sniper shootings of both protesters and security personnel in order to inflame the situation, recalling similar modi operandi seen in Cairo in 2009, Libya in 2011, and Maidan in 2014. The purpose of such cynicism was to throw Iraq into chaos.

Here is the reconstruction of the story:

[Speaker of the Council of Representatives of Iraq] Halbousi attended the parliamentary session while almost none of the Sunni members did. This was because the Americans had learned that Abdul-Mehdi was planning to reveal sensitive secrets in the session and sent Halbousi to prevent this. Halbousi cut Abdul-Mehdi off at the commencement of his speech and then asked for the live airing of the session to be stopped. After this, Halbousi together with other members, sat next to Abdul-Mehdi, speaking openly with him but without it being recorded. This is what was discussed in that session that was not broadcast:

Abdul-Mehdi spoke angrily about how the Americans had ruined the country and now refused to complete infrastructure and electricity grid projects unless they were promised 50% of oil revenues, which Abdul-Mehdi refused.

The complete (translated) words of Abdul-Mahdi’s speech to parliament:

This is why I visited China and signed an important agreement with them to undertake the construction instead. Upon my return, Trump called me to ask me to reject this agreement. When I refused, he threatened to unleash huge demonstrations against me that would end my premiership.

Huge demonstrations against me duly materialized and Trump called again to threaten that if I did not comply with his demands, then he would have Marine snipers on tall buildings target protesters and security personnel alike in order to pressure me.

I refused again and handed in my resignation. To this day the Americans insist on us rescinding our deal with the Chinese.

After this, when our Minister of Defense publicly stated that a third party was targeting both protestors and security personnel alike (just as Trump had threatened he would do), I received a new call from Trump threatening to kill both me and the Minister of Defense if we kept on talking about this “third party”.

Nobody imagined that the threat was to be applied to General Soleimani, but it was difficult for Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi to reveal the weekslong backstory behind the terrorist attack.

[Sunsilver]

Apparently, not only were there no casualties from the Iranian strikes, it appears that that was intentional on the part of the Iranians, in an apparent effort to allow the situation to diffuse.

When I first saw this on the news it triggered my B.S. detector. And as I've found out, it's become pretty finely tuned over the years I've been on this planet:

They now say there were 11 casualties but no deaths. I think the fact it was misreported by the American media means there were people on the American side that badly wanted to defuse the situation, too

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/16/politics ... index.html


And because it is still and always so very, very true, and there is SO much misinformation on the internet highway:

Aeschylus "In war, truth is the first casualty." 525-546 B.C.

[Snowdog]

Hopefully the USA will not get itself embroiled in yet another war it will have to pull out of in a hurry again. April 1975 and August 2021 is enough.