Quote (Black XistenZ @ 3 Jan 2020 12:20)
Indeed, this whole thing didnt start with attacks on US airbases. And yes, the U.S. have committed a lot of mistakes.
But let's not forget what Soleimani did to become the target of this airstrike in the first place: he was the public face and the mastermind behind Iran's foreign policy adventures. He was the man in charge when the Hezbollah destabilized Lebanon and launched rockets on Israel. The Quds Forces under his command funneled equipent to the Houthi rebels in Yemen and thus was one of the main factors for the continuation of this war[1]. He was orchestrating the Iranian attempts to seize control of the Iraqi government, his allied militias were the ones who violently knocked down the recent insurgence by ordinary Iraqis with hundreds of casualties, he is believed to have been behind the siege of the US embassy from 2 days ago. His forces were also one of the main actors during the Syrian civil war.
[1] I still believe that the war crimes by the Saudi-led alliance are worse than those of the Houthis, I would assign something like 66% of the moral guilt for the atrocities of the war in Yemen on the Saudis and 33% on the Houthis/their Iranian masterminds.
i love how you describe it as "mistakes" or "sins from 2 decades ago". sure sounds a bit nicer than what it actually is:
decades of continuing war crimes (yes, that also includes obama's drone war legacy), originating from a
violation of international law, fabricating a casus belli to
attack and invade a sovereign country...
and again, soleimani most definitely was a bad guy, and without the consequences that his killing might have, i'd consider it a good thing - but the whole framing of the issue by self-proclaimed "anti-interventionists" of the trump cult is just borderline insane. had your emperor done the exact opposite of this current reality, you people would defend his course with the same fact- and context-denying fervour. your only really 'principled' position is that whatever he decrees is good by definition, and must therefore be defended:
- abandoning the kurds to protect another country's oil fields, because erdogan shouted at him over the phone: good, because 'anti-interventionist'.
- outright war threats over an incident with a multitude of different actors, with different motivations and backgrounds: good, because those 'provocations by iran just can't stand'.
what this ridiculously one-sided framing of this issue (suggesting this is all just america defending itself against unwarranted provocations and attacks by evil iran) completely ignores, is the fact that the recent sabre rattling is only the latest episode of escalating tensions with iran by this administration: unilaterally breaking the nuclear deal / additional severe sanctions / increased drone activity and troop presence near iran's borders / designating the revolutionary guard a 'terrorist organisation' / indiscriminate bombings of organisations close to iran / blaming them for the tanker incident without ANY evidence (tonkin / incubators / wmds come to mind)... the list of actions to
isolate and corner iran, to increase public support for, and provoke a military conflict, is long - you'd have to be a fool not to realise what's going on there.