Is Suleimani irreplaceable?
Before we betrayed them, the Kurds had ISIS defeated. But did the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi finish them off? Was taking out Osama bin Laden the last we heard of al-Qaeda?
No, no and no. There’s always somebody to take their place. Assassination is not only against the law by an executive order from Gerald Ford in 1976, but it’s stupid. All you’re going to do is fill your enemy with a terrible resolve, as Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto said after Pearl Harbor. Thinking Iran will fear us after this act is naïve. Muslims don’t need much reason to hate the infidel.
Qassim Suleimani was a bad actor, to be sure, and the world is probably better off without him, but who’s going to replace him? It could be better the devil you know. In the war against terrorism, are we turning our armed forces into terrorists? A Navy Seal is pardoned after he knifed an unarmed prisoner to death and posed for a photograph with the corpse.
A professional soldier would’ve wanted the terrorist alive so he could be interrogated. If he had to kill him, he wouldn’t wait around for a photo-op. He’d move on to eliminate another enemy. No matter how heinous his crimes, singling out a foreign official for a hit job may be appropriate for the mafia, but beneath the government of the American people.
Fred Malo Jr.
Carbondale
