by Chris Faure – for The Saker Blog
The most telling US reactions to their killing of General Soleimani.
File photo : newly-appointed IRGC Quds Force commander Gen. Esmail Qaani. (Photo by Tasnim News Agency)
The US, by the names of Pompeo, Trump and Mark Esper are in full damage control mode. If it was possible they would be bicycling backwards while trying to look forwards.
First, Mr Trump: his role is to malign, disgrace and to vilify General Soleimani in order to convince his internal audience that he did the right thing. This is a replay of the movies that we saw before with the killings of Osama Bin Laden, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (x), and Muammar Qaddafi.
Mr Trump has to look like the Strong Man to his domestic audience and the tactic that he uses is to make extreme statements that smear General Soleimani to such an extent, that he himself looks good to his audience.
“Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani was “hated and feared” within his own country and should have been killed “many years ago”
“General Qassem Soleimani has killed or badly wounded thousands of Americans over an extended period of time, and was plotting to kill many more…but got caught!” Trump tweeted Friday, in his first direct comments about Soleimani’s death and the U.S. airstrike. “He was directly and indirectly responsible for the death of millions of people, including the recent large number of PROTESTERS killed in Iran itself.”
Now clearly General Suleimani is not responsible for the death of millions of people, and he was revered and beloved by his people. But this has to be said by Mr Trump because he campaigned on bringing troops back and less war, and of course this action is clearly the opposite so he has to make it look like a good thing.
Mr Trump is trying to look like The Strong Man saving his people from evil.
Then, Mr Pompeo: Given that he is a self-admitted, one that tells lies for the glory of the American experiment, he is doing what he is good at. He is trying to lie his way out of the actions of the US. He follows a 2-fold strategy, desperately trying to call together a type of ‘coalition’ that will repeat his words and agree with him, and even before they agree, or not, he already tweets it out. He is calling everybody in the world and then tweeting that he has just spoken to so and so, and assured them that the US wants to de-escalate. Mr Pompeo is lying to everybody.
So, Pompeo is trying to look like The Good Guy and in touch with the whole world and they will all agree with him that the Good US is trying to de-escalate from a situation that is clearly Iran’s fault.
Mark Esper has been somewhat quiet the last few hours, simply messaging as follows:
“To Iran & its proxy militias: we will not accept continued attacks against our personnel & forces in the region. Attacks against us will be met w/ responses in the time, manner, & place of our choosing. We urge the Iranian regime to end malign activities.”
Mr Esper is trying to look like The Serious Guy.
Why? Why are they playing these roles? Mr Trump wants to retain his domestic audience and Mr Pompeo wants to retain the world as friendlies and Mr Esper wants to be taken seriously in his military decisions.
There is nobody that questions the fact that Iran will retaliate. We are just waiting for what and how. Mr Trump is building ground for an eventual retaliation to make it look like it is all Iran’s fault. They are playing Iran for a patsy. Iran will not bite, no matter how much it hurts.
So, let us be clear what the Strong Man, the Good Guy and the Serious Guy just did. They killed the head of Iran’s Quds force, Qassem Soleimani, and the head of Iraq’s Poplar Mobilization Forces, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. This killing was done on the territory of Iraq. Bicycling backwards will not change the fact that this was an act of war probably viewed in the Middle East as something akin even to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. As these killings are extrajudicial, so will we see extrajudicial retaliation.
Who benefits from the killing? Israel has tried all it could to force Iran to retaliate violently against the USA. Iran has stayed calm and called for dialog
Israel had to make a provocation that will shake Iran so hard that it will finally attack the US directly or indirectly
Israel wants this to happen so the USA finally take care of destroying Iran to ‘save’ tiny Israel.
It will not succed. Iran will not attack the USA and it will not attack any Gulf countries. It will target Israeli officials the first in line been Netanyahu.
No wonder Netanyahu rushed home from Greece. He is terrified and whatever Israel repeats to dispel its direct responsibility in this crime, everybody knows that Netanyahyu is the main instigator.
He will be discarded in a way or another from continuing his career. Good bye Bibi!
“Iran will not bite, no matter how much it hurts.”
But aren’t they in a bit of a trap here? Iran can refrain from biting all they want. The point of the op was to establish Iranian motive and opportunity for anything that happens now, even if they do nothing. Anyone can arrange a bit of false flag, no matter how flimsy, that will be sufficient to allow a “shock and awe” bombing that will make Trump’s base wet their pants with glee. Sure, the price will be extraordinarily high for the US in the long-run, but the neocons don’t appear to care or even be aware.
“Anyone can arrange a bit of false flag, no matter how flimsy, that will be sufficient to allow a “shock and awe” bombing…”
Yeah… bombers coming from where? Missiles launched from where? Most of the US assets in the Middle East are within range of Iranian missiles and drones. Lots of nice juicy hostages, at a time and in a climate when the US government cannot afford even half a dozen dead service people.
Reapers and/or helicopters. It looks like there is an acute shortage of manpads on the Iranian/Iraqi side. Besides: helicopter rotor blades do not respond very well to bullets from an automatic weapon.
Big cheesy smile on Netyahoos face as he has played and triggered his megamaniacal psychopathic DT….saying “all credit is due to Trump” ….for following his own invented agenda of Iranic hysteria.
Iran will not take on an opponent like the US/Israel & let them use their strengths to its weaknesses therefore a conventional head to head response is out of the question, That only leaves asymmetric tactics – use of proxies, car bombs, IEDs, suicide attacks, sabotage operations, drones, all manner of things. US will be on the defensive wordwide because its personnel are not going to know where any attack will happen, when or what form it will take.
US reaction:
https://summit.news/2020/01/03/tucker-carlson-slams-iran-escalation-theyre-liars-and-they-dont-care-about-you/
Ron Paul on RT said it best today 1/2/2020 and I see no response from Tulsi Gabbard.
She responded and condemned it and again urged the US to pull out of Syria and Iraq. Saker has posted it in a separate article.
So there you go, she is being consistent to her past words.
The image I’ve had just recently – exacerbated by the murders of these two men – is like that picture you can get of the image of a woman who, looked at one way, is an old woman with a “Witches chin” but switch your perspective and you can see a beautiful young woman dressed for a ball.**
Observing the Empire Regime across the Middle East and the Pacific Orient these days, I first see a bull on steroids, crashing around in a china shop, randomly wrecking everything to no purpose. Then I switch vision a bit, and see that story of the pigeon on the chess board, strutting around knocking over pieces. pooping all over everything, then saying it won the game!!
And if you just concentrate – you can see both at once!!
**https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7307450/optical-illusion-young-or-old-woman-depends-on-age/
One would think that a tit-for-tat would be reactive, emotional response. Even if Iranians would react emotionally (irrationally), which general or whatever they should target? There is simply no-one in US of the the equivalent value as General Soleimani was to Iran. Therefore, that is out of question, what is the point of the killing somebody who is worthless? But death by many cuts might be in cards. there are 800+ confirmed US/NATO bases allover the globe – in UK, France, Germany, Turkey, former “communist” countries, Bosnia, Kosovo… Randomly picking a base, once a week, every week, amounts to at least 50 attacks in a year, of various degree of harm, the only pattern being -regularity of attacks. Europe is flooded with ME refugees, who knows who they are, and what they may come up with….
As a Christian, I should say to The Donald and company “may God help them’ but I won’t. They are Godless people and do not deserve his help.
“As a Christian, I should say to The Donald and company “may God help them’…”
As a Christian, you have nothing in common with those people except your species. Even Satanists are closer to Christ than they are.
“As a Christian, you have nothing in common with those people except your species.”
I am starting to think humans split a while back. Homo-sapien carried on but Homo-Psycho was a new form. They went on to take all the positions of power easily, unhindered by morality, shame or empathy.
I voted for Donald Trump because of his control over Supreme Court justices and his public penchant for peace. Well, so much for my peace vote.
The White House has gotta be polling this action like crazy. And they will find that Americans do not approve of assassinating people with sniper rockets. It is not the American way of doing business.
The Iranians could just leave this “thing” swinging in the wind and watch Trump’s approval ratings head south.
It is rather strange to see the head spokesman for the Democrat party on foreign and military affairs, Senator Chris Murphy, openly criticize this move by Trump in an address to the American People.
He said, I quote: “we have killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s al Quds force and their highest military general, that is the equivalent of Iran killing our Secretary of State, an act of war. What would be our reaction to such an act? It would massive and disproportionate, so we expect Iran’s reactions is going to massive and disproportionate…”
Such mea culpas are not normal for USA politicians. He also said “Soleimani wasn’t a lone wolf, he was carrying the policy of Iran’s supreme leader”,…… “by taking out Soleimani, you are creating a martyr that is going to inspire attacks in the future”. “maybe there were other ways to prevent this [alleged imminent Iranian] attack other than assassination …”
At which point CNN idiot, “Jake Tapper”, tried to spin the senator out of using the word “assassination”. Tapper: “are you calling it an assassination because I believe that word carries the weight of legal theory that it was against the law.” To which senator Murphy responded: “It is an assassination, I mean this is a top official of a foreign government, this isn’t the head of a non state terrorist group”…”he was a commanding general of a sovereign foreign nation and we executed him, so I don’t think you can call it anything other than an assassination, it’s not the first time that America has been involved assassinating a foreign official, but it’s probably the most high profile foreign official that the United States military uhh has executed.”
There you have it. The impossible has happened, a US senator has actually spoken the truth.
So what does this mean. Is there real soul searching going on here, is it confusion because they are internally not fully aligned, or are they egging Iran on to do the expected/wanted overt war, or is it real concern that they screwed up and didn’t think this through? Time will tell.
You’ll have to forgive me that I find it incredulous that anyone is left in the United States power structure that lets the truth leak out of his/her mouth.
I should clarify-
I find it incredulous that any USA or western politician allows themselves to speak the truth without a self serving Machiavellian intent or something twisted behind it. This is not my fault, it’s their fault for having totally destroyed their own credibility for making a virtue of lying, cheating, and all evils in service of their personal ambitions or their realpolitik.
So sadly for senator Murphy, but international observers are too jaded to accept his words as sincere even if they were.
Its appalling indictment on US to engage in such attacks outside their lawful jurisdiction.
A complete breach of international law.
And these sorts things is why the US Govt is despised so much around the world (and has been for a long time including by many of its own people) and why America is in moral decline and will collapse in the end just as the Roman Empire did.
Whether Soleimani was good or bad is irrelevant.
Trump, like Obama, has gone too far and this will damage him in November.
What would happen, if say, Iran responded by taking out a US Senator or Rep or General at some future date ? And that is quite possible. Then Trump gets the blame.
There are problems with the Iran Govt but there is also problems with the US Govt.
Everyone in other countries is sick and tired of this ongoing battle that started in 1979 and its time it ended.
I saw a video of the rocket attack under some army goon celebrating that it was a double tap. You see the carnage, people going to help. The second rocket comes in, killing and maiming all those going to assist the victims. Then you hear the screams. I was an army brat. I still read small unit combat books. This kind of action is decried in all the books, WW2 and Viet Nam. The soldiers all saying how vicious, inhuman, animal like it is. How criminal etc. Then here we are. This is terrorist action. Appalling and shameful.