Middle East: Saudis Murder & Dismember Washington Post Contributor

WakeForestRanger said:

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Kenya?

Must have been one of Obama's cousins.

4 Americans died in Benghazi. Let's see if this move costs more American lives than that, and if it does, I expect similar Republican outrage.

Except we didn't cause Benghazi like Trump will be intentionally causing the deaths of Americans.

Nuke em all and let God sort em out. It’s not like Jesus had anything to do with that area anyway.

Demonwolverine said:

4 Americans died in Benghazi. Let's see if this move costs more American lives than that, and if it does, I expect similar Republican outrage.

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All I've seen on social media today and yesterday from Republicans - especially on facebook - are chain posts praising Trump for taking out a terrorist, attacks on CNN for "brainwashing" people into feeling guilty that a terrorist is dead, and claims that Trump, unlike that weakling Muslim Obama, is actually standing tall for 'Murica in the Middle East. Republicans love this shit - we're bombing somebody else, so they can walk tall and feel proud. If the Iranians or some other group retaliates and kills Americans, they'll just find some way to blame it all on the Democrats. It's what they do.

Republicans LOVE spilling blood in the Middle East. Love it. Don’t let them pretend they don’t.

I feel so proud to have him as our Commander in Chief

WakeForestRanger said:

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Trumps base doesn’t give two shits in a bucket what anyone else in his admin says. It’s all about trump to them. Pompeo? Pence? Jesus? Reagan? Those four could say anything contradicting trump and whatever Trump says is what they care about. It’s simple. Their identities are tied to trump and to compromise that is to compromise their identity. Trump is a large piece of them, certainly bigger than the Jesus they claim to have a part of themselves.

Anti-ISIS coalition suspends operations due to Iran threat

Jacob Knutson11 hours ago
U.S. Army Paratroopers
U.S. Army paratroopers heading to Iraq, Jan. 1. Photo: Capt. Robyn Haake/US Army/AFP via Getty Images
The U.S.-led military coalition created to combat the Islamic State announced Sunday that it is limiting operations against ISIS and instead is focusing on protecting Iraqi bases from potential attacks by Iran-backed militia groups in response to the killing of commander Qasem Soleimani.

Why it matters: As a result of President Trump's bold decision to take out Soleimani, American forces in Syria and Iraq must now devote resources to protecting their bases, greatly hampering the coalition's primary goal of combating ISIS.

What they're saying: "Repeated rocket attacks over the last two months by elements of Kata'ib Hezbollah have caused the death of Iraqi Security Forces personnel and a U.S. civilian. As a result we are now fully committed to protecting the Iraqi bases that host Coalition troops," the coalition said.

"This has limited our capacity to conduct training with partners and to support their operations against Daesh and we have therefore paused these activities, subject to continuous review."


https://www.axios.com/isis-coalition-iraq-iran-threat-69405aae-0475-41b0-86ed-0737808d8751.html

What's next: The coalition said it remains "ready" to resume operations against ISIS, but did not give a restart time or date.

I've seen people post on social media about Iranian-Americans who attended a concert in Vancouver by an Iranian artist were detained at the Canadian border. I don't think it's gone national yet.

PhDeac said:

Which is why we had an international nuclear agreement with them.

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Of course.


And, of course, Trump is insanely obsessed with Obama. Some pathological and reality-distorting mixture of envy and hatred.

Demonwolverine said:

4 Americans died in Benghazi. Let's see if this move costs more American lives than that, and if it does, I expect similar Republican outrage.

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For sure!

Heather Cox Richardson’s writeup today. If you can’t read it all, skip to near the end where she says Trump supporters barely mentioned Soleimani before the assassination. It’s so annoying to see people pretend this guy was our big enemy when they didn’t know about him until he was dead. Even posters here pirate that obvious propaganda like pathetic sheep.

January 5, 2020 (Sunday)

Today the fallout from the killing of General Qassem Soleimani continued, and Trump doubled down on the idea he can act unilaterally.

First, the fallout: In Iran, Soleimani’s funeral today drew hundreds of thousands of mourners stretching almost twenty miles in what some observers called an unprecedented show of unity in the country which had, until the killing, been divided by civil unrest. Iran announced it would no longer honor the 2015 nuclear deal from which Trump withdrew the United States in 2018 but which France, Germany, the United Kingdom, China, and Russia had continued to honor. It says it considers the killings an act of war.

In Iraq, the Iraqi parliament met in an emergency session and, with lawmakers chanting “Death to America,” voted to expel the 5,200 U.S. troops in the country, although the unanimous vote is somewhat misleading: groups traditionally supportive of US involvement in Iraq did not show up for the vote. The Iraqi government needs to approve this vote before it expels the troops, but the Iraqi government has wanted the U.S. presence to prevent the resurgence of ISIS, and today the U.S. announced it will stop fighting ISIS in order to protect our own bases in Iraq.

A story in the Washington Post lays the burden of Trump’s decision on pressure from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has wanted to target Soleimani for months. Pompeo has focused on Iran since Trump appointed him to direct the CIA in 2017. Since then, he has become friendly with Yossi Cohen, the director of Israel’s intelligence service, and both men worried about the power of Iran. Notably, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been the only foreign leader who had praised the attack. Pompeo, like Vice President Mike Pence, is an evangelical Christian who believes in the rapture after the Jews have been returned to the Holy Land.

I am concerned that these facts are not separable.

Retired General David Petraeus, who led the U.S. surge in Iraq, said: “There’s no question that the tensions have been dramatically increased as a result of this action…. This is clearly heading in a very bad direction. Make no mistake about it: There will be losses on all sides if this escalates further.”

It is important to remember that Trump cannot ever admit to a mistake. His personality type means he simply doubles down on whatever he has done, insisting that it is others that have done something wrong, not him.

True to form, although his argument for pulling our troops out of northern Syria was that he wanted to bring the troops home (in fact, they were simply reassigned), he told reporters on Air Force 1 today that the US would not leave Iraq. “We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s there…. We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it…. We will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before.”

Faced with pushback on the idea that he could bomb Iranian cultural sites (it’s a war crime), he said: “They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way.” (In fact, this is inaccurate on so many counts I’m not going to tackle it all, but will point out at least that cultural heritage sites do not matter just to the people of the nation in which they are located. Cultural sites are valuable to all of us as scholars study them to understand our past and human society. Destroying a cultural site in Iran is no different than destroying Notre Dame cathedral, for example: I am neither French nor Iranian, but those sites are part of my heritage as a human being.)

Finally, faced with criticism of his launching of the attack without alerting the Gang of Eight (the leaders of both parties in both houses of Congress, as well as on the intelligence committees, who must be notified by law within 48 hours), he tweeted: “These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!”

Legal notice of an emergency strike to Congress is, of course, required within 48 hours, and Congress alone can declare war. Further, the notion that a tweet is an acceptable way to announce a war is nuts.

The official Twitter account for the House Foreign Affairs Committee answered: “This Media Post will serve as a reminder that war powers reside in the Congress under the United States Constitution. And that you should read the War Powers Act. And that you’re not a dictator.”

OK, fine. But OUR LEADERS ARE ARGUING ABOUT STARTING A WAR WITH IRAN OVER TWITTER. It is hard to imagine that this deteriorating state of our politics can continue much longer.

A couple of things about those defending the assassination of Soleimani: As I said last night, the pro-Trump propaganda forces are desperately trying to turn this event into a way to defend Trump against those they are now calling “pro-terrorist.” They are insisting that Soleimani was one of our top enemies, and it was high time we killed him. A Twitter user thought to check how often top Trump supporters tweeted about Soleimani before yesterday, and the results are illuminating: there was virtually no discussion of him by anyone now claiming he was one of our very top enemies. The contrast between their heated and quite uniform presentation of him after the attack as one of the world’s worst terrorists, and their dead silence before it, suggests a concerted propaganda effort. (The link is in the notes, and is worth checking out.) Donald Trump mentioned Soleimani exactly once, in 2015, in the context of complaining about a reporter asking him “gotcha” questions (he did not know who Soleimani was).

But here’s an important point. Both those in favor of the killing and opposed to it are fighting over what is going to happen thanks to the assassination. We. Do. Not. Know. The future is unwritten. All we can do is to make guesses, based on what experts tell us they have learned to expect through their knowledge of the region. Overwhelmingly, they say the attack has increased volatility and presents new dangers. I am not an expert on Iran, and have nothing original to contribute to this debate; I am simply gathering up for you what others have said.

What I do know cold, though, is the nature of the American presidency and political power. Trump upped the ante of authoritarianism today, announcing he can launch a war without notifying Congress and that he can commit war crimes with impunity.

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