So Donald Trump Wanted to Get Us Out of Expensive Foreign Wars??

OK-- so a U.S. airstrike at Baghdad airport has killed Iran'™s most revered military leader, Qasem Soleimani:   https://t.co/NbZW4DaWvD  We are now closer to war with Iran. 

Following Soleimani's death, statements from the Pentagon and the State Department have indicated that Soleimani was “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq”; however, the intelligence to support that claim has not yet been released.  The Pentagon statement also indicated that the action was taken to deter “future Iranian attack plans,” but on Friday morning, tens of thousands are marching in the streets of cities across Iran, and the possibility of all-out war seems much, much closer.

The action, taken on the direct orders of Donald Trump, would seem to completely violate a longstanding executive order forbidding U.S. involvement in the assassination of foreign officials. 

Trump engaged in prior consultation only with Republican members of Congress and did not seek any authorization under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force or any other authority. 

It also appears that the Trump White House also did not let allied military or intelligence services know that the attack was coming.  

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the “world is a much safer place”, but his State Department simultaneously ordered for all American civilians to leave Iraq and issuing travel warnings for Americans in dozens of countries around the world.  

The operation to strike and kill Soleimani was planned days in advance by the Pentagon and involved violating the sovereignty of third-party nation: Iraq.

Even though Trump has said repeatedly over the years that the U.S. should stay out of expensive foreign wars, a war with Iran disrupts not just the 7th-leading world oil producer,  but also number 6 (Iraq), number 8 (UAE), and number 2 (Saudi Arabia).   In addition to paying at the pump, an extended war with Iran would leave U.S. taxpayers footing the bill for the conflict itself-- conservatively estimated at over a $1 trillion.

In defense of Suleimani's assassination, Mike Pence has been promoting bogus conspiracy theories that attempt to link September 11 terrorists to Iran.  In a tweet,  Pence insisted that the general “assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks”, misstating the number of 9/11 hijackers (there were actually 19 of them) and insinuating Suleimani’s involvement despite a lack of evidence.  Foreign policy experts were quick to point out on social media that Pence’s assertions were unsubstantiated.

The official 9/11 commission report found there was “no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack”, and that 15 out of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, and the remainder were from the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Egypt.  Moreover, Suleimani’s name is never mentioned in the nearly 600-page report.

The idea that General Suleimani was all powerful and that the Quds Force will now retreat, or that Iran’s ties with Shiite armed groups in Iraq and Lebanon like Hezbollah will suffer, indicates a superficial understanding of Iran and the Revolutionary Guard.
 
The killing will not in itself weaken the Revolutionary Guard or Iran’s role in the region.  Rather, the assassination of Suleimani will provide Iran's leaders with a convenient opportunity to unify the country. The Islamic Republic has proven before that it knows how to create consensus in the face of an external enemy

In reality, this was a highly symbolic assassination. The problem for the United States is that symbolism has the power to move people to action.