Iran Situation

[Dill]

(01-07-2020, 09:27 AM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: I think Americans are, by nature, desensitized to the imperialist actions of our government. Murdering members of another nation's military is just the next step up from being World Police.

The question I always had was how do you differentiate the Soleimanis from the Kims? Or the Putins? Or the Xis? Or, as Donald Trump famously said, even Americans? 
"There are a lot of killers," Trump responded. "Got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country's so innocent?"
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/02/04/trump-fox-interview/97508274/

Americans aren't really fans of being compared to Putin (as Trump did in this particular quote). It's just another one of those quotes that you see and think "wait, and people still vote for this guy?"

I agree with the bolded.  Part of the "desensitization" results from cagy framing of foreign policy on the part of all presidential administrations. E.g., the current conflict is presented as a consequences of Obama's "bad deal" and "bad choices" by the Iranians. We killed their number two and threaten escalation if they make a "bad decision" by responding in kind. So any conflagration which follows will be the consequence of their bad decision.  Many Americans see through this, but the 35-40% who don't are enough to keep Trump in power and the Senate Republican.

The primary knock against Soleimani seems to be that he was effective in projecting and maintianing Iran's power in the Shia Crescent. He is sometimes credited with keeping Assad in power. He angered the US by supporting Shia militias in Iraq, who were contesting both the US and Sunnis for control of the county.

As for differentiating Soleimanis from the Kims or the Putins or the Xis--I don't find it especially hard to construct a continuum based on contempt for liberal values: Al Baghdadi and bin Laden would be the worst, the outlying extreme; next would come Kim, a creature of the most thoroughgoing totalitarian society currently in existence; Putin and Xi do not fit in either class. They are autocrats in authoritarian systems, but still manage to maintain the backing of most of their populace; and there are important differences between them--Putin's exercises power in personalist fashion in a regime that has become a kleptocracy; Xi wields institutional and ideological power. Both want to/do interact with the international community.   If we were trying to fit every world leader on this continuum, Trump would range near Putin in terms of his character/personality, but he is constrained by the political system he leads.

As far as Soleimani is concerned, he is not the leader of a country, but a general tasked with creating a buffer zone for Iran by strengthening clients like Assad and Hezbollah. On the news last night I heard someone claim he was a terrorist because he had killed "thousands" including "other Muslims," which is a silly sort of thing to say.(Imagine someone describing Bill Clinton as a president who plotted the deaths of thousands of his fellow Christians when he bombed Serbia.) Most of those "other Muslims" killed by Soleimani were Iraqi soldiers invading Iran, and later ISIS fighters threatening to overturn Assad. I.e., the same "Muslims" Americans were killing. We hear that he is "responsible" for the deaths of some 700 Americans via some new-fangled shaped-charge IEDs the IRGC supposedly developed and deployed by Shia militia during the Iraq War.  Based on the information I have about the guy, it is not clear how he could be designated a "terrorist" without deploying some kind of double standard, which should be fatal to any such definition. It his not clear how his methods could be differentiated from US practice, without the usual "exceptionalist" dispensation we give ourselves.  I do have an open mind on this matter though, and am not an Iran expert; perhaps someone out there knows more about his activities in Lebanon and Syria, for example, and could provide the requisite differentia specifica.