News has just broken that the Trump administration, without any congressional debate, has assassinated Qassim Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds force. I hate to think it of my own government, but I can’t help but wonder if this had more to do with changing the narrative around impeachment than it did making the world more safe. Soleimani was undoubtedly a terrible man, but we know with absolute certainty that there will be retaliatory attacks, and that more Americans will die as a result of what happened today. The world, once again, is a less stable place because of Donald Trump. Again, this isn’t to say that Soleimani, who is likely responsible for a number of terrorist attacks against U.S. forces, didn’t deserve this fate. This seems, however, to be incredibly risky given the likelihood that it will lead to a dangerous escalation in the region, if not an all-out war. And, as I said, I’m finding the timing highly suspect. More importantly, though, is the fact that no one in the administration has yet to come forward with a strategy or plan, explaining why this was move was necessary, what the next steps would be, etc. As in other instances with this administration, there does not appear to be a coherent strategy, and that’s what concerns me.
Here are a number of reports that I’ve found of interest. Please, if come across anything else good, add links in the comments section.
There’s a reason our Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war: Every American may be intimately affected by a violent conflict. Soleimani was evil. But our system demands consent for war from the people, acting through their representatives and senators in Congress.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) January 3, 2020
"The United States is now in a hot war with Iran after having waged war via proxies for the past several decades. This doesn’t mean war, it will not lead to war, and it doesn’t risk war. None of that. It is war." @ExumAM https://t.co/iVjCitR8EV
— Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) January 3, 2020
Soleimani was an enemy of the United States. That’s not a question.
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?
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) January 3, 2020
Trump may have just started a war with no congressional debate. I really hope the worst case scenario doesn’t happen but everything about this situation suggests serious escalation to come.
— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) January 3, 2020
Two things can be true:
1. Soleimani is human trash.
2. Assassinating him is reckless and potentially going to be the cause of a massive escalation to an avoidable war.
I don't understand why you are acting like both of these things can't be true.
— Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) January 3, 2020
(2/3) In taking down a military leader of a sovereign state, we have gone far beyond a proportional response to the Iranian threats to our Embassy, placed greater stress on the "friendly" Iraqi government and virtually guaranteed forceful, and further escalatory attacks by Iraq…
— Wes Clark (@GeneralClark) January 3, 2020
Make no mistake: any war with Iran will not look like the 1990 Gulf war or the 2003 Iraq wars. It will be fought throughout the region w a wide range of tools vs a wide range of civilian, economic, & military targets. The region (and possibly the world) will be the battlefield.
— Richard N. Haass (@RichardHaass) January 3, 2020
Biden: "Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox, and he owes the American people an explanation of the strategy and plan to keep safe our troops and embassy personnel, our people and our interests, both here at home & abroad, & our partners throughout the region."
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 3, 2020
Just got off the phone with Sen. Graham: "We need to get ready for a major pushback. Our people in Iraq and the Middle East are going to be targeted. We need to be ready to defend our people in the Middle East. I think we need to be ready for a big counterpunch."
— Erin Banco (@ErinBanco) January 3, 2020
House Foreign Affairs Chair Eliot Engel: "The law requires notification so the President can't plunge the United States into ill-considered wars. We must also hear without delay from senior officials about this action and their plans to deal with the aftermath."
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 3, 2020
There's too much throat clearing about what a bad guy Soleimani was. Yes. He was awful. But the potential consequences are far more significant. The total lack of an Iran strategy needs to be the focus.
— Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) January 3, 2020
20 Comments
And then there’s this…
Can any stock market experts check who made mass trades on oil futures today?
It’s since been deleted, but Eric Trump tweeted out “bout to open a big ol’ can of whoop ass” yesterday. The tweet has since been deleted. Did Eric Trump know while Congress did not?
https://twitter.com/ashtonpittman/status/1212932497434128384?s=20
For those needing more context as I did tonight. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/03/world/middleeast/iraq-embassy-baghdad-airport-attack.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Important read on Suleimani: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/30/the-shadow-commander
This is the same war. We have been at war all along. This has been the Third World War; we’re just recognizing it as such now. We just escalated from the Iranians killing a contractor to us killing the top General of Iran, and de facto top general of Iraq and Syria and at least 4 other places as well as the likely next leader of Iran. But it’s not new. Trump appears to have done this to save face. Strongmen always need to save face. But this killing may have been our military’s way to use his worst impulses to create the most benefit. (I”m saying if they were going to kill somebody, this guy was the right target. He has a lot of American and other blood on his hands) There’s no plan for what happens next, but we can be sure our enemies abroad are planning, without their dominant strategist now though. All in all, frankly it’s just more of the same, and those suffering most will not be Americans. Our anxiety re retaliation in absence of evidence speaks to our culpability.
When we read foreign policy in terms of domestic politics, we inevitably fall prey to moral certainty (some irony in this) and fail to look at the full complexity of the situation. I wish we stopped and tried to understand more (in foreign policy there is always more to know) and listened before holding forth and making proclamations. Twitter is just abuzz right now with opinions lacking much information. It’s just never that simple— But then I just did the same. It fundamentally speaks to anxiety and the narrative response to that. But let’s not pretend we have anything close to adequate information to really assess this situation or know what happens next.
I guess we need to put narratives around these things. It would be cool, though, if we could start paying more attention to war and foreign policy and their impacts generally than how they impacts our political races and how we personally feel threatened. Maybe it would be more ethical to just care about the details and experiences of war and foreign policy in those places and understand the hard choices our country faces in navigating the huge mess we have made. Maybe the most ethical thing we can do re foreign policy and wars is to not have an opinion and just read.
188 Democrats voted with Republicans against the No More Illegal War resolution submitted to Congress by Tulsi.
The pro-war imperialist know that Sanders is quit likely to win the next election. A good shooting war will rally the troops.
Jean Henry is already pro-war. Mark Maynard is pro-war. The TRUMPERS Finnaly get some folks on this site to support them.
Resistance my ass
As if Hillary would have done anything differently. Or Biden or probably Mayor Pander from Indiana. I have a feeling Warren would even become more hawkish if she were in the White House. Enough of this shit. Bernie is the only candidate who genuinely might be a different animal from what we’ve had for the last hundred years. Sanders 2020.
I had a roof leak once. I got out the ladder and then decided it was too difficult to tackle on my own. Since I had already picked up the hammer, I decided to fix the plumbing in the basement. It was a shame to let such a fine tool go unused.
To Mark’s point, we are no longer talking about impeachment and the necessity for a trial in the Senate.
You weren’t talking about impeachment immediately before this either. If anything the escalation in Iraq gave the opportunity for Mark’s beloved conspiracy theories to take a few more gasps of breath before they are completely dead.
I don’t think it’s paranoid conspiracy theory at this point to suspect that Donald Trump may see foreign policy primarily through a lens of personal benefit. There is ample evidence that’s the case.
If you suspect that is true then you should get back to work trying rob convince people. My point was that people has already largely stopped trying to convince people because nobody was being convinced. In fact your efforts to convince seemed to be having an opposite effect. Pretending that the escalation in Iraq is an intentional distraction from presenting the arguments for impeachment does not match up with facts. It does match up with my theory that Mark is a conspiracy theorist, however.
Trump does everything through the lens of personal benefit. The question is why are we making this act of aggression primarily about domestic partisan politics? It’s not. We are woefully underinformed about foreign policy. Being anti-war is not being informed. It’s ideology. I wish all of it would vanish from foreign affairs, on all sides. It’s not supposed to be about us. When we make it about us, we cause great harm, no matter is one is hawkish or a peacenick. We sound like a bunch of spoiled teenagers that don’t know our privileged security comes at great cost to others or, if they do, who think waving a peace sign cleans them of their responsibility or offers any kind of solution.
Bernie is no peacenick. Go back to his FP debate with HRC and tell me where he differed on the subject. He did a lot of hand waving and yelled populist nonsense but offered no policy difference. When pressed he was as militaristic as HRC but less honest. Tulsi does offer a foreign policy difference, but Tulsi does not have the support of most Americans, even on the left. IF you really want to end our participation in foreign wars and let Putin and Assad do what they will, then you should support her. If you don’t, then stop partisan flag-waving and get informed.
Listen to Mike Pompeo lie in response to French criticism– every sentence is a lie– to us and think about how that sounds to people abroad, especially those he is lying about.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/01/03/pompeo-france-comment-new-day-intv-live-ldn-vpx.cnn
We have to start doing this better. What a fucking mess. And no washing our hands is not an option. Anyone who says that means I’m a warmonger is as much a bullshitter as Pompeo and no less culpable than any of us.
Whoever is orchestrating this administration’s actions, I feel confident it’s not Trump. He may have a Loki like impact on their planning but this is not a man who is running the country: https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/12/30/president-trump-likes-to-golf-orig-vstan-jm.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/
Newer and bigger hammers are on their way. It’s happening in all the nuclear hot spots, not just Russia. The US, India, Iran! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-30/putin-s-hypersonic-nuclear-missile-stirs-fears-of-new-arms-race
Oh an North Korea may try to explode a nuclear missile in space! What could possibly go wrong?
The concept of the American people, through their elected Congressional representatives, being able to thoughtfully consider, and approve (or not), a declaration of “War” against another country is a now quaint relic of our our democratic past.
Despite efforts to strengthen and re-affirm this bedrock principle, such as the 1973 War Powers Resolution, the power of the president to take unilateral military action – without review, approval, or oversight from Congress – has only continued to grow.
The nails in the coffin were the 2001″Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists” (AUMF), which authorized the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001 and any “associated forces;” along with the “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution” of 2002.
These two acts, passed with largely bi-partisan support, have given U.S. presidents (Bush II, Obama, and now Trump) what amounts to a “blank check” to pursue Forever War®™ virtually anywhere around the world – that is, the power to act unilaterally with no clearly defined time-frame, enemies, goals, or budget.
Demetrius is correct. Of course, even before that we had covert operations to do the same. I have no idea which is better or worse. I do know that congress has been politically hamstrung by us, not corporations, from holding executive power accountable.The question of whether partisan politics should in any way enter into national security and war powers is a good one. Rightly, Congress should be the check on national security and foreign policy efforts not the architects of it. Right now, they are neither. I feel pretty sure if Trump had asked for permission on this one, he would have gotten bi=partisan support however. If not right now, eventually. None of that means I think this was ok, FWIW. I’m just trying to be honest in my assessment of where the country’s sentiment is right now. The left tends to imagine it has more support than it does on foreign policy. People like their money, mobility and especially their security. They seem less interested in looking at the embedded costs of all these things.
I think another major factor that is driving this recklessness is that we now have an all volunteer military … with the front-line troops made up mostly of lower-income, less educated kids from inner cities and small towns all across America.
For example it is almost impossible to image that we would have spent 20 years in a mostly pointless war in Afghanistan if there had been a realistic chance that sons and daughters from comfortable middle- and upper-class families would have been asked to risk their lives.
If the latest incident does result in a war with Iran (or a wider Middle East conflict), you can bet the bulk of the dead and wounded will end up being mostly black, brown, and poor white kids who ended up enlisting for a chance to “get an education” or “see the world.”
I was just talking to someone with a friend in the military who has been on a 4 month deployment in the Middle East that just got extended by 6 months, which is standard. My cousin got called up to Iraq with 30 days left to serve. They kept him there a year. Then they come back and many don’t qualify for the benefits they were promised. Some have them reneged when the VA changes the deal. It’s nothing like the experience of military vets after WW2 or Korea. It’s a fucking mess. They keep people on because they can’t attract enough recruits, even taking them on in lieu of jail sentences.
It’s all a disaster. I think if we reinstated the draft for military or other mandatory service and allowed no exclusions, we would quickly stop using hard power to get our way abroad.
Of course, no one could get elected with that as their policy. The more politicized the intelligence services get, the less likely anyone will want to work for them either. Politics is just gross. I wish we had banned political parties as Madison (I think?) suggested.
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