The Dog Has Been Wagged

So much for a quiet start to 2020.

As of 9:45 PM, both Iraqi and Iranian state TV have reported that Iranian Quds Commander Qasem Soleimani has been killed by an American-led airstrike outside Baghdad's international airport. From Al Jazeera:

Al Jazeera's Osama Bin Javaid, reporting from Baghdad, said the incident appeared to be a targeted raid.

Our correspondent said that the deaths are a major turning point in Iraq and the entire Middle East.

He said that the region has already been "on edge" since the US strike on PMF forces near Iraq's border with Syria, and the attack on the US Embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday.

"This is a major blow on the relationship between the United States and the Iraqi government," bin Javaid said. "It is a very precarious situation on which this significant development is taking place."

The news was just confirmed by the US Defense Department.

Soleimani was widely regarded as the second-most popular person in Iran after the Shah and his death will be used to rally anti-American animosity not just in Iran but also throughout the region. To quote Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy:

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

As LL pointed out on the previous thread, the Iranian Guard was designated as a terrorist group over the summer. The 2001 AUMF grants the authority for the U.S. to authorize strikes against terrorists. As Murphy points out, the question becomes under what authority did the Department of Defense act?

We all know that Donald Trump runs foreign policy based on who can give him what he wants. His Trump Towers in Turkey and Saudi Arabia allow him to be all chummy with Erdogan and MBS while taking a hardline stance against Iran, where he has no property. With the New Year's Eve attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad fresh in his mind combined with a need to overwrite the recent news about his withholding Ukranian aid, there can be no doubt that Trump saw this as an opportunity to shift the media focus away from his crimes and toward a war with a country that he sees as expendable.

The reprisals will be great. American lives will be lost. The volume just got turned up to 11 in the Middle East and Jared and company have no fucking clue what to do. This is the great fear many of us had in 2016 when we saw a vindictive man with no basic understanding of the world ascend to the nation's highest office. There are no cooler heads to prevail; we now have a dick-waving contest led by a man who never's heard the word "no" who now has the fresh taste of blood in his mouth. Republicans have never met a war they didn't love and Donald Trump loves the adulation and admiration he hears at his Nuremberg rallies. He will love nothing more than using Soleimani's death as an applause line at each and every rally between now and November 3rd. Meanwhile, the Middle East will be thrust into chaos, all because Trump The Fucktard couldn't handle the fact that Barack Obama was such a better dealmaker with Iran than he'll ever be.

Donald the Dove, eh Maureen Dowd?