Trust the process, except when there’s no trust and no process
By: Jake Cappuccino
Tags: Iran, Trump Administration, Process, Qasem Soleimani, Killing

Photo by hosein charbaghi on Unsplash

Take almost any other president and the killing of Iran’s Qassem Soleimani is almost a non-issue. (Yeah I see the two “almosts” too, deal with it.)

And yet, for every Republican or White House talking head praising the aggressive move, there are Republicans and Democrats pressing the Trump administration to justify its actions, actions which brought the US and Iran to the brink of war.

Unsurprisingly, the administration is floundering in its responses.

Contrast this political situation with the recent high-profile killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS.

Both Baghdadi and Soleimani were high-level commanders of terrorist organizations and both did very bad things to America and its allies. At first blush, the rationales for killing these two feel self-explanatory and more or less the same: You do bad things against America, you get killed.

But, despite the broad-stroke similarities, the justifications for these two killings cannot and should not be the same because of how these two men operated in the world.

While Baghdadi formally belonged to no nation, Soleimani was a bonafide leader of an organized, rival nation state, one that, if it wished, could directly attack and kill Americans tomorrow across the Middle East. While Baghdadi’s death is likely to leave only ISIS in mourning, the killing of a commander of an actual nation could also upset other nations who fear that America’s wrath may target one of their own someday.

And at the end of the day, Soleimani was a bad guy, but he was Iran’s bad guy. Citizens across Iran mourned his death and vowed retaliation against the US, some presumably because they supported his actual work, but many I suspect because he was out in the world fighting the fight for Iran. I would bet in their minds nobody but Iranians should be able to decide Soleimani should be ousted.

In all seriousness, if Iran hadn’t shot down a civilian airliner, I think anti-American sentiment could’ve continued unabated for some time. (It must also be said that maybe if Iran wasn’t on a hair-trigger over war with the US that it might have exercised more caution when shooting things out of the sky.)

Just consider the flip side of the Soleimani situation: It’s not a reach to say if Iran conducted a targeted assassination of any high-level US commander — no analogous role equivalent to Soleimani’s exists in the US government — every American would be up in arms.

Which brings to me — ah here it is! — my point: The killing of Soleimani — a bad dude but not someone your government ought to casually assassinate — is an issue because nobody completely believes the Trump administration or in its decision-making process.

The first rationale given, that Soleimani was actively planning attacks on US diplomats, makes sense and would probably suffice if true:

Jan 2, 2020 tweet from the White House Twitter

But then the explanations proliferated and cast doubt on whether or not the government had any immediate, pressing reason for killing Soleimani:

Jan 8, 2020 tweet from White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham

Jan 13, 2020 tweet from President Donald Trump

Ultimately, it’s the fact that there is no one explanation, no clear evidence of rational, reliable, predictable government process that is unacceptable, no matter who the government kills or how much he or she might seem to deserve it.

In a case like this, it’s really about more than whom we killed. It’s about the when and the why and the enormous gamble the US made to do so. And when the government can’t give you a straight answer, it makes you wonder what other half-baked decisions might be made. Because even if a half-baked pie taste delicious, you’re going to want to know in the future that you can trust the pies won’t be half-baked.

Unfortunately for the Trump administration it’s one half-baked pie after another and it’s only a matter of time until one of these risky decisions sends the US to war.

P.S.

In case you’re wondering, though it might seem like I’ve judged the killing to be wrong, I’m reserving my judgment on that. If Iran de-escalates tensions with the US, then this can be considered a strong foreign policy win for the Trump administration. If Iran escalates, well I think we will justifiably view this killing as a strategic blunder. The policy may ultimately turn out to be right, but my concern is that broken clocks are still right twice a day and I can’t tell whether Trump’s administration gamed this out and thought this extraordinary action through.