All,
The sheer fucking INSANITY of this mindless attack on the supreme
commander of the Iranian military and its utter disregard for the very
severe and clearly murderous consequences that are absolutely sure to
follow for not only the United States but many other places in the world
is the direct result of choosing and allowing a maniacal nihilist to
"lead" the country. The most disturbing aspect of this typically
authoritarian action is that it was always completely predictable given
the undeniably psychopathic political reality of a raging walking ID and
certifiable MADMAN in the white house. No remotely stable political or
military leader would have done this under any circumstances whatsoever
for either so-called strategic or tactical reasons. This is nothing
but a gigantic CATASTROPHE from any perspective and is putting us all on
the fasttrack toward World War 3 which as any sane person knows can
only lead to complete global destruction. Stay tuned because the worst
as always is yet to come...
Kofi
US Wars and Military Action
Iran
Donald Trump
Who Will Stop Trump’s War on Iran?
The assassination of a top Iranian military commander could cause the conflict to spiral out of control.
by Jeet Heer
January 3, 2020
The Nation
January 3, 2020
The Nation
PHOTO: Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani.
(Photo by Pool / Press Office of Iranian Supreme Leader/Anadolu
Agency/Getty Images)
On Friday morning in Baghdad, American military forces, under the order
of Donald Trump, launched an air strike assassinating Maj. Gen. Qassem
Suleimani, a commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps who has long
been a thorn in the side of American forces in the Middle East. The
killing of Suleimani, a popular figure in Iran, has been described as a
major escalation in hostilities between the United States and the
Islamic Republic. But that’s an understatement. As Andrew Exum, former
deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East policy, wrote in
The Atlantic, “This doesn’t mean war, it will not lead to war, and it
doesn’t risk war. None of that. It is war.” It’s unclear how Iran will
retaliate, but an intensification of hostilities is almost a certainty.
If Exum is right and the United States is already in a de facto war
with Iran, this is a strange conflict. This is a war fought not over
natural resources or ideology but rather motivated by petty grievances,
with Trump goaded into action by a wounded ego.
The timing of the
assassination, coming so soon on the heels of the impeachment, has
raised suspicions that Trump is trying to stir up conflict in order
distract attention from his political troubles. It’s plausible enough
that impeachment played a factor in triggering Trump’s actions, but his
conflict with Iran goes back further. The pivotal date is 2017 and the
decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. Since that move, the
Trump administration has pursued a punitive policy of “maximum pressure”
on Iran that has lead inexorably to a cascading cycle of tit-for-tat
retaliations. As the United States has ramped up pressure on Iran with
sanctions and bombings, the Islamic Republic has responded with attacks
on American allies and personnel.
Writing in The Atlantic, Peter
Beinart usefully noted that Trump has displayed contradictory attitudes
towards Iran, with bombastic chest-beating tempered by a desire to avoid
another full-scale Middle Eastern war. While Trump does have hawks
around him who seem eager for armed conflict with Iran, Trump himself
has hesitated to pull the trigger. As Beinart points out, “with each
escalation, Trump’s predicament worsens. His confidants insist that he
can’t afford a war—which would likely boost oil prices and damage the
economy—especially in an election year. Yet he also can’t pursue real
diplomacy, at least not without provoking a confrontation with the GOP’s
hawkish foreign-policy elite. He’s caught between his desire to avoid
being like George W. Bush and his desire to avoid being like Barack
Obama.”
Unable to resolve the contradiction between his instincts
to avoid a war and his need to present himself as a tough guy to his
Republican followers, Trump has settled for turning Iran policy into a
personal vendetta. This was on full display in the Twitter argument
Trump had with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Responding
to an earlier Trump tweet threatening Iran, Khamenei tweeted on
Wednesday, “If the Islamic Republic decides to challenge & fight, it
will do so unequivocally. We’re not after wars, but we strongly defend
the Iranian nation’s interests, dignity, & glory. If anyone
threatens that, we will unhesitatingly confront & strike them.”
Trump seems to have no plan—to just react to events in an ad hoc way.
Wendy Sherman, a former ambassador who negotiated with Iran on nuclear
weapons, said on MSNBC on Thursday night, “I pray with all of my heart
that the Trump administration has a plan and a strategy, but all I have
seen to date…is one-off actions and this one-off action can have
unbelievably horrific consequences.” This lack of planning is a natural
outgrowth of the Trump White House’s inability to hire and retain
experts. As Ben Denison of Tuft University’s Center for Strategic
Studies notes, “Sadly, the purging of Iranian expertise in the State
Dept, DoD, and the NSC makes it even more likely that we do not have the
understanding of Iranian dynamics to understand what will come next.”
Beyond the incompetence and staffing disorder of the Trump
administration, the larger problem is that there has been no effective
move by Congress to rein in Trump’s careening foreign policy. A
president shouldn’t be able to launch an attack that is an act of war
without congressional authorization. Apart from a brief discussion with
Lindsey Graham at Mar-a-Lago, it seems Trump didn’t notify anyone else
in Congress ahead of time.
Responding to news reports,
Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy tweeted, “The question is this—as
reports suggest, did America just assassinate, without any congressional
authorization, the second most powerful person in Iran, knowingly
setting off a potential massive regional war?”
Trump’s petty
motives and incoherent policy have been enabled by a Congress that has
long been derelict in its duty to provide oversight over foreign policy.
This abdication of responsibility is all too typical of American
politics since the 9/11 terrorist attacks—under both Democratic and
Republican presidents.
There is concern about the turn to war
even among Republicans, at least privately. According to Washington Post
reporter Robert Costa, “Some of my best Hill sources tonight tell me
there is very little to no appetite inside GOP for attacking Iran in
Iran, but support for taking steps to protect embassy in Baghdad as long
as intel is solid. Emphasis on securing compound, stability. Uneasiness
tho about POTUS.” But these Republicans are speaking to Costa only off
the record.
The question is whether Congress can find the will to
put the brakes on Trump’s Iran policy, which has created a de facto
state of war that can easily spiral into a large-scale disaster. Perhaps
one possible blessing of Trump’s presidency is that he’s so reckless he
might force even a feckless Congress to do its duty.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent at The Nation and the
author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with
Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles
(2014).
PHOTO: Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani.
(Photo by Pool / Press Office of Iranian Supreme Leader/Anadolu
Agency/Getty Images)
