What would have happened if a week before Adolf Hitler invaded Poland and started World War II in Europe, Winston Churchill had ordered the successful assassination of the Führer? Would there have been a World War II in Europe? How many military and civilian deaths would have been avoided.
On Jan. 2, the United States, at the direction of President Trump, assassinated General Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran's elite Quds Force. Soleimani was killed in a U.S. airstrike at Baghdad's international airport.
The Quds Force is the elite wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. It is the special forces' external arm of the IRGC responsible for supporting terrorist proxies across the Middle East. It reports directly to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The Quds Force was itself designated a terror group in 2007. The group is estimated to have amassed a militia of 20,000 fighters.
The Pentagon states, "General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region."
According to Fox News, in April 2019, "the State Department announced that Iranian and Iranian-backed forces led by Soleimani were responsible for killing 608 U.S. troops during the Iraq War. ... He was the mastermind behind the major military operations, bombings and assassinations that accounted for at least 17 percent of all U.S. personnel deaths in Iraq between 2003 and 2011."
Fox News quotes the Pentagon as saying: "General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members, and the wounding of thousands more [by providing Improvised Explosive Devices during the Iraq War]."
"He had orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months, including the attack on Dec. 27, culminating in the death and wounding of additional American and Iraqi personnel. General Soleimani also approved the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that took place this week."
President Trump is not the first U.S. president to order the assassination of a foreign military leader engaged in killing Americans. On April 18, 1943, the assassination of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was authorized by FDR. Yamamoto was the head of the Japanese Imperial Fleet. He had commanded the attack at Pearl Harbor.
Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. special forces on May 2, 2011, at the order of President Obama.
So what is better? Doing nothing and letting a state-terrorist like Soleimani kill Americans here and there without consequence? Killing various ordinary soldiers in reprisal for deaths of Americans? Fighting an all-out war? Or taking out a leader — or all the leaders — of an enemy if that might avoid the war?
For nearly 20 years, Presidents Bush and Obama watched as Soleimani and his proxies killed Americans and Jews all over the Middle East. Did our tolerance prevent further attacks?
On Dec. 31, President Trump ordered U.S. air strikes against five Hezbollah targets, killing some 25 Hezbollah fighters, in retaliation for an attack on an Iraqi coalition base that killed one U.S. civilian two days before. Did it do any good? Did the strikes stop Soleimani from hustling off to Baghdad to plan attacks on our embassy there? From supplying weapons to the "protesters?"
Iran is on the verge of gaining nuclear weapons. Once they have them, how do we stop them? Do we have to wait until they launch a surprise nuclear attack on Israel?
Warfare is changing. President Trump has made clear that he has no interest in becoming engaged in a land war in the Middle East. From what happened to General Soleimani, it appears that we have technologies that allow us to track a top Iranian general traveling from Iran to Baghdad. That strongly suggests we have like capability to track and take out Iran's supreme religious leader, its president, its key nuclear scientists or its military leaders.
If Iran keeps up its provocations, Soleimani may not be the last American-hating Iranian to be terminated.
This is not the traditional or conventional way of fighting a war. The playbook has always stated that war leaders send young men out to fight and be killed. But the folks who run Iran had better be careful. This president does not play by the conventional rules. And when he says, "it is not a warning, but a threat" they may quickly find out that he means it.
The president's critics are quick to say that the assassination of Soleimani will only encourage the Iranians to engage in further provocations. Perhaps. But that may quickly cease to be "good sport," if the Iranian leaders ordering the reprisals themselves become the targets of American retaliation. New rules of engagement?
Published in the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus on January 10, 2020
Copyright 2020, John Donald O'Shea
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