I have recently had several thoughts regarding the Suleimani incident and follow-on events. I’ve tried to capture them though with the churn, they’ve evolved and continued to change. I’ll get them at some point in the near future. One thought for the beginning had been with me that none other has seemed to express. This one I’ll get in this writing. But first a story from a decade ago.
While driving along I-264 with my now ex-wife, we were having a discussion, funny enough, on Iran. The discussion turned to heated argument which also suggested what nerds were we. The topic was of the Shah after the Revolution whom was suffering cancer in Mexico and sought treatment in the United States. Carter, being a judicious and thorough President, asked the opinions of his embassy to which he was told that essentially, were he to permit the Shah’s entry for treatment, the new Theocratic government would assume the Shah was in fact in America to plot a comeback campaign which would further incite and inflame anti-American sentiment and would likely result in the embassy being stormed. Carter decided to allow the Shah in for treatment and the ambassador was proved right. Our debate turned argument centered on did Carter do the correct thing. I said yes and that allowing predicted behavior on the part of religious zealots to dictate actions and policy was tantamount to negotiating with terrorists. My wife said Carter was wrong with Vulcan logic about needs of the many versus the few. After this went back and forth, neither of us budging, we came up with a third option. What if one had instead sent the hospital to Mexico? Often government looks at either/or binary scenarios. We play as if we’re in the horns of a dilemma often failing to give thought towards any third ways. We see our Rook and Queen forked. Also, we tend to pick actions as one from a choice in a serial fashion when perhaps a situation exists when we can have our cake and eat it too.
Now to the Suleimani assassination. Anyone of reasonable mind and the littlest of knowledge accepts that Suleimani was a nefarious person whom met a just end. The debate of sane persons is instead about whether or not the consequences of taking a high level state official out are worth the benefits of removing a terrorist mastermind. Here’s the catch no one has seemed to make. The benefits of killing Suleimani arose from actually silencing Suleimani. The costs, however, only come after being found as the party responsible for such action. Here should be an avenue of question. Why would we announce we had done it? That makes no sense on the international stage. We could have let deniability reign while confusion existed as to possible Shiite internecine squabbles or possibly even a Da’esh retaliation. Where’s our Machiavelli mind, where’s our Tyrion Lannister? We could even have played this up after the strike playing the part of a sympathetic government noting how “a previously antagonistic terror funding criminal adversary” had in fact “helped us with ISIS and was trying to reign in his previously agitated militias.” Such speech might not have been genuine, but it could have served to hold Iranian angst after we took an action to desirable benefit thus attempting to mitigate the negative consequences. Instead of treating the command to action as presidential, we have posturing to the base and the stirring of chaos for personal political gain. Trump called the tactic a decade ago and has extra need to block impeachment noise now. Someone should surely call out this endangerment of troops and lack of respect to the office. It is a unique aspect in this situation that has been missed. It differs from possibly failing to properly balance the cost benefit analysis of the action itself. It is also worse in that in this way, this is a malicious choice while misbalancing could have been an honest error. And like so many other activities of this administration, it shows horrible traits unbefitting this office. We are very fortunate that Routhani has proved a master statesman whom may now be in the running for a Nobel. Though every time Trump brags about that to which he should have stayed silent, he further pushes such that Routhani may be forced to reopen the issue and elevate violence due to his own stupidly hardline compatriots.