By Nancy Thorner & Al Boese -
Critically-important news and articles were published in Saturday’s edition of the WSJ on January 3rd to dominate this weekend's cycle following the drone strike that killed Solemani and close associates. The event was a significant one in the War on Terror to have eliminated one of the world’s most deadly architects and executioner of terrorism. It is also a blow to Iran’s Aitolia who counted on him to create mayhem in the Middle East, granting Iran freedom of movement and action there. As such, this is a major disruption of the Iranian grand plan.
The four WSJ articles shared below confirm just how important this elimination of Soleimani will be and a historical perspective of the influence and impact of Soleimani.
The world is far in a far better with Soleimani gone and Iran on the defensive than before the drone strike approved by Donald J Trump. Nevertheless, as usual the hysterical and hypocritical response from the left and right-wing establishments abound.
Article 1 by the Editorial Board: Justice Arrives for Soleimani
Excerpts from article:
"Iran is promising retribution, and perhaps it will strike somewhere. But now Iran will have to consider that Mr. Trump will strike back. The U.S. President had shown great restraint—more than we thought he should—in not retaliating after Iran or its proxies shot down an American drone, attacked Saudi oil facilities, and attacked bases in Iraq with U.S. troops 10 times in the last two months.
Mr. Trump finally drew a line at the death of an American contractor and the storming of the Embassy. Perhaps he heard echoes of Barack Obama’s failure in Benghazi. Whatever Mr. Trump’s calculation, Mr. Khamenei now has to consider that even targets inside Iran are not safe.”
The death of Soleimani should also reassure U.S. allies spooked by Barack Obama’s many capitulations and Mr. Trump’s partial withdrawal from Syria last year. This assumes Mr. Trump will be resolute if Iran escalates and doesn’t withdraw remaining U.S. forces from Iraq or Syria.
Article 2 by The Editorial Board: Trump’s Legal Authority
Following the killing of Soleimani the Dem’s are crying foul because they were not consulted and labeling the action illegal. The WSJ article by The Editorial Board make the legal case that supports the Trump action. No wonder Trump never consulted the Dem’s in Congress, can you imagine the rush to the cameras and mic’s to either expose the plan or to criticize the idea; it is in their DNA to be openly critical Trump at every turn and one can imagine the new “wag the dog” narrative in light of the Grand Impeachment movement they have created.
President Trump was right to ignore Congress, he saved lives and created an atmosphere for success, rather than leaks that sinks ships.
Excerpts from article:
“Mr. Trump is accused of violating the executive order against assassinations. But that long-time ban has never applied to terrorists, which Soleimani clearly was. He ran Iran’s Quds Force, which the Bush Administration designated as a terror group in 2007. He was also a general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which Mr. Trump designated as a terror group last year. If Mr. Trump’s drone strike was illegal, then so were Barack Obama’s raid on Osama bin Laden and his hundreds of drone strikes over eight years as President.
Mr. Trump also has the power, as Commander in Chief, to use military force against anyone waging war against the U.S. The Quds Force has been doing that for years, going back to the Iraq war and recently with the rocket attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq by militia under Soleimani’s control. Soleimani was a general in the chain of command of the enemy, and as such was a justifiable target.
Congress had declared war on Japan, but under international law there is no need for such a declaration when a nation is acting in self-defense. The drone strike in Iraq was a defensive military action intended to prevent attacks on U.S. troops by an enemy general who had ordered such attacks in the past. Numerous Presidents have used force in such a way without Congressional approval, including Ronald Reagan in 1986 against Libya after the terror bombing at a Berlin nightclub killed three people, including two American soldiers.
Some say Mr. Trump’s drone strike is different because it has the potential to become a larger conflict with Iran and thus needs Congressional assent. But Mr. Obama’s Libya intervention also had the potential to become a larger conflict, as did JFK’s naval blockade of Cuba. The consequences of any military action are hard to predict.
The question for these critics is whether they would be making the same arguments if someone else were President. We doubt it.
Article 3 by Reuel Marc Gerecht: The Bloody Legacy of Qasem Soleimani
Mr. Gerecht is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and author, as Edward Shirley, of “Know Thine Enemy: A Spy’s Journey into Revolutionary Iran” (1997).
In case you were disturbed by the killing of Qasem Soleimani, take a deep breath and read some history of the late, overachieving terrorist.
If nothing else, the world is rid of a very bad dude and perhaps has left Iranian leadership with fewer options to promote unrest and mayhem in the Middle East, the US and Europe. They mat also be looking over their shoulder for the next set of shoes to drop.
Excerpts from article:
". . . Soleimani and Mr. Khamenei are as responsible as Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Sunni Syrians and the displacement of millions. It’s impossible to overstate the importance of this foreign adventure to Tehran’s self-esteem and its adjusted “civilizing mission,” which Mr. Khamenei has always seen as his sustaining purpose. Soleimani became a cult figure among Shiite holy warriors—in his heavily accented, halting Arabic, he exuded a menacing charisma—and even among more secularized Iranians who saw in him an Iranian paladin who made Sunni Arabs tremble.
But that allure was fading. In a country fed up with religious dictatorship, it’s not surprising that discussions about Solemani’s becoming president died before an American missile killed him. In Iraq, the earliest protests among Shiite politicians against Solemani’s heavy-handedness were in 2004; anger at Iranian meddling and religious arrogance has been growing ever since. It’s not surprising to see some Iraqis celebrate his death, or the more fearful quietly express relief.
Now Soleimani has become a martyr in the Islamic revolution’s 41-year battle against the U.S. The men he trained and advanced will carry on. But the supreme leader may be less bold, at least for a while. Mr. Khamenei’s close relationship with Soleimani probably revolved around the man-of-action fortifying the cleric’s more ambitious inclinations.
It’s an excellent bet that Tehran’s most daring maneuvers—the foiled bombing of Iranian dissidents in Paris in June 2018, which could have killed hundreds; the attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf and the Saudi oil facilities last year; and the repeated recent attacks on American bases in Iraq, which killed and wounded Americans—all had Soleimani’s fingerprints.
Article 4 by Holman W.Jenkins, Jr: On Iran, Trump Says ‘Yes We Can’
This article by Mr. Jenkins, Jr. is an interesting twist on the outcome of the killing of an Iranian key operative, Qasem Soleimani. Oil independence is at least 3 dimensional, and should, but likely not have an impact on the Liberals who want to ban fracking.
Energy independence has given our leaders so many strategic options that were not available pre fracking, that National security and financial health can be secured irrespective of any disruption of oil flow from the middle east. That seriously reduces the options the Ayatollahs have available to retaliate the death of the General.
Excerpts from article:
“By every account, the U.S. had Soleimani in its sights many times over the years but concern for wider consequences always stayed its trigger finger until now. Soleimani was responsible for outrages around the world. He was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in Iraq. In the past decade, he was the chief proponent of Iran’s expanding proxy wars in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, the world has changed and any tip-up in oil prices is likely to do the U.S. economy as much good as harm. By a common view of economic history, most post war recessions were caused by oil-price spikes and/or related Federal Reserve actions to curb inflationary pressures. But such pressures are not apparent today. Weighed against any damage to consumers from higher oil prices are millions of jobs and billions of dollars in domestic investment and export revenues directly and indirectly tied to America’s drilling boom.
Mr. Trump’s decision to pull the trigger was premised on strong advice that a Soleimani strike need not drag the U.S. into a wider war nor produce undue economic consequences given the new dynamics of the U.S. economy and the global oil market.
Iranian leaders in decades past could calculate that terrorist actions and oil disruptions aimed at third-party countries would be effective ways to pressure a U.S. president. Less so now. President Trump, through no particular virtue of his own, just doesn’t need to care as much as his predecessors did. Add his temperamental indifference to allies and the outside world. Though I might be wrong, I don’t see that Iran has many tricks up its sleeve that would come close to damaging the U.S. as much as they would damage Iran itself.”
