Trump claimed Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force, was killed because he was planning large-scale attacks against American diplomatic and military personnel. But Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi told the parliament that Trump asked Abdul-Mahdi to mediate the dispute between the US and Iran and Soleimani arrived in Baghdad on a commercial flight Jan. 2 and went through passport control with his diplomatic passport to meet with Abdul-Mahdi to discuss peace prospects. Luckily, Abdul-Mahdi didn’t meet Soleimani at the airport, but Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis went out to welcome the general, so he and eight other passengers also died in the fiery blast.
Juan Cole noted that the lack of security at the US embassy, which allowed the grounds to be invaded by thousands of Iraqi protesters Dec. 31, undermined claims that there were substantial threats against American targets. “If they thought there was a dire such threat in the offing, wouldn’t they have sent in some Marines? Only after they received a stronger than expected reaction to their assassination campaign did they finally take the security of the embassy seriously.”
Trump has been expected to pick a fight with Iran ever since he got in the Oval Office. He is known to project his ambitions on his rivals, and in 2011 and 2012, he repeatedly claimed that Barack Obama would start a war with Iran in order to get re-elected. Of course, Obama managed to win re-election without mixing it up with Iran. But with Trump’s job approval stuck in the low 40s while disapproval has hovered in the 52 to 54 percent range the past year — and a narrow pluality of voters favoring his removal from office — the ImPOTUS is hoping the rally-round-the-flag move will turn his misfortunes around.
Defenders of the drone strike say Soleimani is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of US military and contractors in Iraq, so we are well rid of him. But Trump took a charismatic special forces commander and made him a martyr. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians and Iraqis came out into the streets Jan. 3 to mourn the martyr and reprise the chant, “Death to America.”
Cole noted that young protesters in downtown Baghdad and other cities initially broke into happy dances when they heard Soleimani had been murdered, since he was plotting to repress them. But a day later they were chanting against both Iranian and US presence in Iraq. Shiites who had come to resent Iranian influence in Iraq made an abrupt about-face. In Karbala, where the Iranian consulate was recently torched, an enormous crowd mourned Soleimani as a martyr. There are also large numbers of Shiites in Iraq, Pakistan and India. And it might take a generation or more before Iranians will take a peace overture from America seriously.
How did Soleimani get his murderous reputation? The Department of Defense says Iran-backed Shiite militias, which Soleimani helped train and supply, were responsible for deaths of 603 US troops in Iraq from 2003 to 2011. But most of those deaths occurred during the surge in Iraq, when President George W. Bush pushed thousands of US troops into the country to deal with the sectarian civil war between Shiite and Sunni groups after Saddam Hussein was ousted. The last big burst was in June 2011, as US forces were withdrawing from Iraq, Iranian-backed militants launched rocket attacks on American bases that killed more than a dozen US soldiers, Colin Kahl, a former national security adviser for Vice President Joe Biden, wrote for Foreign Policy. The Obama administration had two options for retaliating: a strike inside Iran that would kill Iranian operatives or unilateral special operations forces raids in Iraq against the militia rocket teams. To head off an escalation to a wider war with Iran, the administration chose the latter.
But the Obama administration also pursued a multinational deal with Iran to stop its development of a nuclear weapon, in exchange for easing sanctions that were strangling Iran’s economy.
The deal, which was reached in 2015 and was approved by the United Nations Security Council, was successful in stopping Iran’s nuclear arms race, according to UN nuclear arms inspectors.
But Trump could not abide Obama’s diplomatic achievement, so one of the first things the Great Misleader did when he took office was to unilaterally renege on the deal. He put economic sanctions back in place against Iran and threatened sanctions against other nations, including NATO allies, who were signatories to the deal if they continued to honor it.
Since good behavior was not rewarded, what was Iran’s recourse? They brought out the rockets and improvised explosive devices and handed them to their affiliates in Iraq, which led to the Dec. 27 rocket attacks on American bases in Iraq.
Iran also has announced it will no longer abide by the limits imposed by the 2015 nuclear deal, Iraq’s Shiite majority parties in parliament have urged their leaders to expel US troops from Iraq and the US-led coalition announced it was suspending its operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. And if Soleimani left behind any big plans to attack American targets, his successors still have the plans and plenty of motivation. Heck of a week for Trump.
Candidates, On Your Marks
As the Iowa caucuses approach on Feb. 3, it’s time to get real about picking the Democratic nominee for president. There field is halved from the 28 who expressed presidential aspirations, but several great candidates remain in the hunt, any of whom would be preferable to Donald J. Trump.After Iowa, the New Hampshire primary is Feb. 11, Nevada caucuses are Feb. 22, South Carolinda’s primary is Feb. 29 and the race could be practically decided on Super Tuesday, March 3, when primaries will be held in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Democrats Abroad, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia are held, and American Samoa will caucus.
Our preferences come down to the two progressive populist candidates: Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. They have managed to raise funds while taking aim at corporate greed and promoting legislation that would improve the lives of working families.
Some pundits say Sanders and Warren are too far left to win the election, but they share an ambition to expand Medicare to cover everybody, which is popular among the electorate at large and will only become more popular if Republicans succeed in getting the Supreme Court to overturn the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare.
Don’t let Trump supporters’ bravado scare you. Trump is a phenomenally unpopular president whose ratings have been a net negative since a month after he took office. Polls show Biden, Sanders and Warren can beat Trump. If that is the case, you might as well vote for the candidate whose platform appeals most to your progressive values. Just don’t say anything about the other candidates that you can’t walk back later if your candidate doesn’t win the nomination. Resolve to vote blue, no matter who. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2020
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