Qasam Soleimani is Dead

Qasam Soleimani is Dead

The President, Donald Trump, launched a direct attack to kill Iran's Qasam Soleimani, leader of the so-called "Quds Force," which is something like the Iran Foreign Legion, involving itself in all kinds of destabilizing operations in the Middle East. As a person whose boots have been on the ground in Iraq, I frankly am not grieving the loss of this guy. No doubt, his organization and its work in the region has been responsible for the death of Americans. His organization has certainly been responsible for the deaths of Kurds, Iraqis, Yemenis, and others. 

It's also instructive to point out that the Obama Administration participated in targeted killings. We could use the word "assassination" if we want. The Obama Administration targeted and killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 560 individuals, compared to around 60 during the Bush Administration. The most famous was the targeting of Osama bin Laden. From Bush to Trump, all of this has occurred under the open-ended language of the 2001 "Authorization for the Use of Military Force" (AUMF), a clever way for Congress to avoid its Constitutional duty to declare war and say "okay, Mr. President, whatever you want to do." Not that Congress doesn't still complain. Partisans of all stripes have decried the AUMF, but really don't want to repeal it, because then Congress would have to be a little more deliberative. 

All that said, here is my problem: it is pretty clear to me that Donald Trump is all action and no strategy. I suspect he would think that is a compliment. He fancies himself as a decisive man of action, taking spur of the moment decision based on his gut. If you ever watched "Celebrity Apprentice" and the "firing scenes," you saw the entire Trump approach in action. Rumors from those involved in that reality show have leaked, and the gist is that Trump would fire people without any knowledge of what had gone on during the week. He often fired high performers, and then the production team would have to scramble with hours of footage to make a high performer look like a slouch. In other words, the experts actually watching the cast were ignored.

A reality television show is one thing. By this point, we all realize that all reality television is complete baloney. "Survivor," which was a first interesting, is now a formulaic bore. How many times does "Boston Rob" have to be brought back? In his latest incarnation, he poses as some kind of "Survivor Guru," advising cast members. One would think Jeff Probst has to be sick of it all. And Survivor is one of the better reality television offerings. Who in their right mind watches "The Bachelor(ette)"? "I really think I am falling for you!!!" But my point is this: reality is different. 

In the current reality, Donald Trump has to think about strategy, because as far as the Iranians are concerned, the United States has been at war with their nation since 1953, when the CIA participated in overthrowing the elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh to install Shah Reza Pahlavi. To many Americans, Iran has been at war with us since "students" occupied the American Embassy in 1979 and the Shah was overthrown. That the governments of Iran and the United States don't trust each other is a given. 

The Obama Administration was imperfect. But one of its accomplishments was coming up with a multilateral framework for dealing with Iran and its nuclear ambitions. As we know, the Trump Administration threw that out in favor of unilateral sanctions and tough talk. When I say "tough talk," I of course mean tweets from Donald Trump. There is a tweet for everything. One of the problems of having a President who breaks glass nearly every single day with his tweets, is that people in the Administration must then somehow throw the glass in a blast furnace and reshape it into glass sculptures that resemble long-term policy. So now we await what killing this guy will turn into. 

What will it turn into?

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