As “conservatives” rally to explain why murdering a high-ranking official of another country is a good thing, one of the most potent—or at least most frequently repeated—arguments is that Iranian General Qassem Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq. The Washington Post tells us of “Soleimani’s legacy: The gruesome, advanced IEDs that haunted U.S. troops in Iraq”, while the right-wing Washington Examiner repeats the Department of Defense figure of 600 deaths in its piece “Qassem Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers”,
Here’s the thing: those Americans couldn’t have, and wouldn’t have, been killed if George Bush hadn’t tried to conquer the Middle East. As I have argued many times, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq presented no threat to the United States before or after 9/11, and everyone in George Bush’s White House knew it. The Republican Party had simply convinced themselves that the violent overthrow of Saddam's government by U.S. forces would somehow guarantee effortless U.S. dominance in the Middle East. With Iraq conveniently in our pocket, giving us, in conjunction with our grateful Saudi allies, effective control of the world’s oil supply, combined with overwhelming military superiority obtained from our new bases in Iraq, it would be easy to put an end to the Great Satan himself, namely, the (supposedly) revolutionary government in Iran, a government that actually helped us, initially, after 9/11, supplying the U.S. with information about al Qaeda, until George Bush stupidly and gratuitously included Iran in his preposterous “Axis of Evil”.
The Iranians, shockingly enough, were smart enough to figure out where this was going, and, even more shockingly, didn’t want it to happen. During the war in Iraq, when the IEDs (“improvised explosive devices”) were actually going off, it was clear that senior American officers were outraged that Iran would attack U.S. forces before we attacked them. You’re supposed to wait your turn, goddamnit! The initiative always belongs to us!
Now, of course, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi is demanding that all U.S. troops get out of Iraq. I don’t know if this will really happen or if it’s just a political ploy/bargaining tool (“if you want to stay here you have to be nicer to me”), but if it does happen, wouldn’t that be, you know, irony?
