Good News: Qasim Soleimani, Dead as Dead can be

I was delighted to hear that Iranian scumbag and General Qasim Soleimani met his end in a ball of fire thanks to a missile from a US Reaper drone. This is good news; this is very good news. We should all be very grateful that we have a President with the courage and patriotism to order the death of QS. I have long bemoaned the fact, and I stress fact, that we in the West have not been at war with the Islamist crazies--be they Shia or Sunni--but we have been under attack. In other words, they have been at war with us, while we have allowed ourselves--as a rule--to suffer attacks and outrages; we have crippled our ability to respond thanks to the goodness of our societies, our kindness towards strangers, our tendency to paralysis through analysis, by trying to anticipate every outcome, every consequence of what we might do--a hopeless task.

There at times when you must just act.

Before we get ourselves into a Bastiat-style discussion of the possible ramifications and unintended consequences of killing QS, let's remind ourselves of some basics. Soleimani deserved to die for the terrorist horrors he has inflicted on the world for the past 25 or so years. He was a prolific mass and serial murderer. There are times when such people just have to be removed, damn the consequences. Would we have desisted from killing Hitler out of concern for the power vacuum his death might leave at the top of the Reich? For fear that his death might energize the Nazi war machine even further? No, no way. Hitler deserved to die, and in a horrible manner. Soleimani, and his evil companions, deserved to become ropa vieja on that Baghdad highway.

Now, some "niceties."

I have been angered, though not surprised, by some of the idiotic negative commentary on Trump's order to shoot. Trump did not need to consult with the Congress or anybody else before giving that order. Soleimani was a uniformed enemy combatant active on a foreign battlefield, directing and implementing operations against US personnel and institutions, e.g., the Embassy. QS had a LONG, LONG history of conducting lethal operations against US and other Western targets, using largely proxy forces. At the time of death, he was in Iraq meeting the leader of one of those proxy militias, the one which had just attacked the US Embassy in Baghdad, and preparing further actions against us. He was not some random civilian Iranian government official whom we assassinated in his home in Tehran. He was a military man, conducting a covert military mission against us outside of Iran's territory. His killing is no more an illegitimate act than say that of Japanese Admiral Yamamoto or of US General Simon Bolivar Bruckner, Jr.

Now, the consequences.

Sure, the Iranians are angry and humiliated. They were convinced that we would not do anything directly to them and that we would be content with killing a few lowly proxy militiamen. They were wrong. Trump is not Obama; he is not going to ship them $1.5 billion in cash and gold in the dead of night in the vain hope of appeasing the Persian Moloch, getting a worthless piece of paper promising that Tehran will cease and desist with (fill in the blank). He is not the sort to put up with another Benghazi massacre. So, yes, the Iranians have a problem on their hands. They have to decide what to do, knowing that it will in all likelihood provoke another terrifying US response. The whole proxy thing is now a bit threadbare, but they could, out of habit, go back to that and have a proxy conduct some sort of operation against US forces, civilians, diplomats, etc. They could launch an attack in London, or Paris, or New York using the "sleeper cells" made possible by idiotic Western immigration policies. They could try some sort of cyber attack. They could launch ship-killing missiles in the Gulf aimed at shutting down marine transit through Hormuz. There are lots of things they might do, many of those were ones they were already doing.

All that, well, is for them to decide: weigh the pros and the cons of an action.

As far as we are concerned, however, we should not wait. We need to be preemptive, and I don't mean just issuing warnings or stepping up security at Embassies and airports. I would hope that the President is being handed a list of options for further action as needed. Now is the time for the President or the Secretary of State to go on the air and tell the Iranians the sorts of things we are considering. Sometimes being secretive is not useful.

Now is the time openly to tell the Iranians that we do not want war, but they should want it much less. We should openly tell them that we will dismantle their oil production, their ability to generate electricity, to distribute water, to conduct financial operations, etc. We should tell them that their navy and air force are forfeit in the case of an action against us, and that we will degrade their ability to conduct all types of military operations. We will smash their proxy forces without mercy. On the other hand, we are open to talks with Tehran and stand ready to discuss all topics without preconditions. Meet us.

We also should quietly, once the current cloud of dust settles, tell the clowns in Baghdad that we are leaving. They are not worth the life a single American.