I tried this.
#happynewyear2020 pic.twitter.com/fgbbwsGfby
— TwistedDoodles (@twisteddoodles) December 31, 2019
I set my expectations at rock bottom. The problem is that no matter how low I set them, somehow the universe drops through the floor.
1. There are unconfirmed reports that Qasem Soleimani commander of Qods Force (Iran's external security agency) has been killed in drone strikes. If true, this will be a major moment in US-Iran relations & Supreme Leader will undoubtedly see this as a major provocation/act of war pic.twitter.com/nLZNbvalsT
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) January 3, 2020
Surprise! The reports have been confirmed by Iranian news sources. As for that bit about whether the US is responsible…
17. Breaking: The Pentagon has released a statement that "at the direction of the President " the United States has killed Qasem Soleimani
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) January 3, 2020
Yes, it is. Our country has committed a bloody assassination of a major figure in Iran, an attack launched at our idiot president’s order and unauthorized by congress. This will have repercussions.
I wonder if impeachment has destabilized our president as much as our president’s actions have destabilized the Middle East? We’re living in a madhouse.
Call your fucking reps. And be a hardass. I’m saying this:
“I don’t need to lecture Mr congressman about what it means if the man occupying the executive office can do whatever the fuck he wants, defying Congress and his own office. You either defend this republic by ANY MEANS NECESSARY or you watch it die.”
“Wag the impeachment”
@#1,rpjohnston:
Sorry, but this was authorized by Congress.
In 2001, Congress passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Terrorism.
It has not been repealed.
It permits the President to use the US Military against anybody who he even suspects was involved with 9/11. Since that is not a precondition which can be proved or disproved in an impeachment trial, let alone to the higher standards of a judicial court, it is effectively open-ended. Trump can claim — and nobody can disprove — that he believed this guy to have been involved in 9/11 or to have shielded somebody involved in 9/11, and he will be immune from Congressional meddling.
Democrats could have undone this one — but then Obama would have had a hard time with his military adventures in Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc., and would never have been able to attempt indefinite detentions (yes, Obama pushed for that).
This was always an obvious and probable outcome of that AUMF, just as the 2008 crash was an obvious and probable outcome of the repeal of Glass-Steagall. It’s too late to complain to Congress about it now — alea iacta est; thanks a whole lot, Centrists, this is your baby, all grown up.
Well, fuck. There’s no bar so low that someone won’t find a way to squeeze under it.
…The Pentagon has released a statement that “at the direction of the President ” the United States has killed Qasem Soleimani
So much for the slim hope that wiser heads with stars on shoulders would intervene to prevent catastrophe(s).
Vicar, in these lawless times, do you think I give a fuck about trifling bullshit like that?
@#6, rpjohnston:
Announcing that the laws don’t matter and “somebody has to pay for this” is how we got into this mess. Literally everything about this was caused and/or made possible by the hysteria following 9/11, when we said “we’re hurt, somebody better be dead”. By all means, follow that example — it worked so fucking well last time.
PZ Myers:
You got it wrong by saying that this wasnt authorised by congress. (See The Vicor)
You also got wrong the location. This didnt happen in Iran, this happened well inside Iraq, close to Bagdad airport. Where Quasem, and a large Iranian militia are. Technically, Iran has invaded Iraq. So please save your righteous indignation, until you can get your basic facts correct.
No love,
An Iraq War Veteran. (And Liberal)
The laws literally don’t matter when it comes to impeachment. Congress could impeach, and convict, Trump over crimes against fashion and there’s nothing anyone could do about it except vote for a different congress.
That they won’t over this or literally any action he takes whatsoever is because they don’t want to, not because they’re bound by some sense of justice.
@#9, Elladan:
And that is entirely correct. The requirements for impeachment are extremely vague, and Congress could probably get away with impeaching the President on the grounds of “we don’t like your face” assuming they were willing to put up with the consequences. But hypotheticals aside, “stop doing what we explicitly told you you could do because we don’t like the style in which you’re doing it” is probably not a good precedent to set on this sort of thing.
Moral sanctimony doesn’t win anything, vicar. Ask mr Chamberlain. Sometines all your possible actions are shit and you gotta choose something. That’s adult life.
And you don’t win a war by refusing to shoot the other guys because “that’s murder” and letting them slaughter you.
Technically, Iran has invaded Iraq. So please save your righteous indignation, until you can get your basic facts correct.
Technically the US has invaded Iraq, again. So please save your righteous indignation. It’s “illegal foreign fighters” fighting “illegal foreign fighters” all the way down.
@#11, rpjohnston:
If you really want to hand Republicans a legitimate reason to dismiss accusations against Trump, I guess there’s no stopping you. I guarantee you that if the House starts impeachment proceedings, the 2001 AUMF will be invoked immediately, and that will spike the guns of those who raised the subject immediately, and then the Republicans will, as usual, conflate the legal illegitimacy of the later charge with the former charges, and get Trump off scot free.
This is why going off half-cocked like you want everyone to do is such a bad idea. It was a bad idea in 2001, too, and we’re not going to pay off even the interest on those bad decisions any time in the next 50 years, assuming the country and humanity still exist so long.
Good God, y’all! (Or not.)
it may be possible that impeachment has unhinged Pres. Trump but it is really hard to say given that he is as far as can be known completely amoral and is likely to say or do anything and has. with the exception of any serious complaint or criticism of Putin
That he is taking credit for this is true to form.
uncle frogy
If you really want to hand Republicans a legitimate reason to dismiss accusations against Trump, I guess there’s no stopping you.
They don’t need “reasons” so your point does not apply.
I wonder how much the idea that we’ve historically re-elected presidents in times of war factored into the decision.
And I wish I could wonder how come there was apparently no fucking adults in the entire chain of command between the White House occupant and the person who pulled the proverbial trigger that allowed this to happen, but then again I’ve grown accustomed to there being zero goddamn functional adults anywhere when it comes to perpetuating American militarism.
@#16, Marcus Ranum
If it comes to that: it doesn’t matter whether Trump starts World War III, his impeachment will never result in removal from office with a Republican-controlled Senate, so there’s no point in shaking your fist at clouds.
We’re fucked, and we’re fucked because Democrats wanted a free hand in 2009 to throw troops around at will instead of rescinding that authority — it’s not like the option wasn’t raised, repeatedly.
@gregsneakel
There are several things you’re wrong about as well:
1) Soleimani was almost certainly in Iraq with the knowledge and permission of the Iraqi government, so we assassinated a guest in their country.
2) The militias aren’t Iranian, they are Iraqi Shiites who are friendly to and aligned with Iran, as are significant portions of the Iraqi government. The attacks on the American embassy in the Green Zone have been carried out by Iraqis with the tacit permission of their own government who were upset over our previous airstrike committed on their soil against their wishes (and in retaliation for an attack on one of their own bases, not on one of ours.)
3) Iran has thus not invaded Iraq in any way. The Iranians that are there are more welcome than our own people and we have committed the great sin (in the culture of that part of the world) of attacking a guest. That you served in Iraq and don’t understand this shows how little we learn of the culture of the places we occupy.
4) This was an astoundingly stupid move and will escalate into attacks that will kill Americans and make us less, not more, safe. You can bet that some action against a US military commander in the middle east will follow, probably from an Iranian proxy force, but possibly by using their own increasingly sophisticated drones to strike US personnel in an allied country.
5) This was all done by Trump and his cronies as a convenient “wag the dog” to distract from impeachment and not for any legitimate diplomatic, strategic, or military goal. It is the essence of poor policy and political opportunism, not any kind of legitimate or necessary action.
Those are facts.
The arc of this presidency has been utterly predictable by anyone that has ever studied the rise of authoritarians in relatively free societies. Step 1, stimulate the economy with massive deficit spending so that the the middle class thinks they are doing well. That lulls the common folk into a sense of complacency. Step 2, create an enemy from which we must be protected. Then convince folks that only you can do it.
There is nothing better than a war to garner support for re-election, regardless of who started it. Trump’s supporters are rabidly in favor of re-electing him, and that support is much greater than it was three years ago.
I hereby predict that Trump will be re-elected.
Same shit as the old shit. Easy way to get popular support behind an authoritarian regime.
Like Hermann Goering said, make the people think they’re under attack, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism.
Trump prodded the wasps nest, and he’s going to ride a wave of chest thumping neocons and status quo neolibs as far as it’ll take him.
Friendly reminder that Dubya won re-election, long after the public realized we were embroiled in an unwinnable forever war, because he didn’t let the terrorists win.
A whole lot of things in Iraq are going wrong quite rapidly.
.1. The Iraqi government and military almost don’t exist.
ISIS, a bunch of murderous thugs almost took over Iraq with very little opposition from the Iraq military. They came close to taking Baghdad before enough militias and the US got it together enough to stop them.
.2. They can’t even protect our embassy in Baghdad.
.3. Iraq may well descend into yet again, another civil war.
IIRC, this would be the third one since we overthrew Saddam Hussein.
This whole mess traces back to one of Trump’s very stupid decisions.
To withdraw from the 6 nation Iran nuclear agreement that was working.
Without anything to replace it but serious economic sanctions.
Iran didn’t negotiate because there is nothing to negotiate about.
They were observing the agreement they signed. So what else could they do but …observe the agreement they signed.
The current Iraq government is pretty shaky right now.
They are Shia and lean towards Iran.
If they turn against us, the USA is in a totally hopeless position.
We know what it takes to occupy Iraq.
Because we’ve done it once before and not too long ago.
It takes at least 150,000 soldiers, on the order of a trillion dollars, a lot of dead people including Americans, and many years.
And what do we gain for all that?
Nothing much, an unstable country waiting to blow up again and again.
Even the current US voter base and leadership can’t be that dumb.
Or can they be?
David C Brayton,
Correct. And it will be by popular vote too.
I only hope that somewhere, John Bolton is trembling with rage that he didn’t get to have a direct hand in this.
I wonder who’ll host Bake Off now?
Yeah, The Vicar is right. Justifying War with the current laws is going to be piss easy for the Republicans and the majority of their base and some independents are going to buy it.
Since my car is in the shop for the foreseeable future, I’m stuck car pooling with RWNJ dad. Today, to keep abreast of the news, he had the radio tuned to the local AM Right-Wing circle jerk station and the volume turned up to 11. As expected, it was nothing but a constant stream of attaboys for Trump’s attack which they called “too-long delayed,” condemnation for the Democrat’s past “weakness” on Iran and their current attempts to “politicize” what should be the obvious course of action, exaggerated claims about the “evil” of Soleimani to justify his killing, and even a few callers who chimed in with insane rants about Obama and “BENGAHZI!!!!”
Of course, since I didn’t feel like either walking to work or looking for a cardboard box to live in from now on, I tried to keep my mouth shut.
Vicar I believe that the Alien and Sedition Acts and Wilson’s various anti radical laws from WWI are still in effect. We never get rid of a good authoritarian reactionary piece of legislation once we’ve got it. Might be able to use it later.
@stwriley
“Soleimani was almost certainly in Iraq with the knowledge and permission of the Iraqi government.”
Which anal orifice are you pulling this out of? Do you speak for the Iraqi gov’t? What mom’s basement did you gather that secret knowledge ?
A senior Iranian commander, AND his collection of iranian personnel entered Iraq. Your point 3 is wrong, and moot.
Personnel and human intelligence led to the facts he was planning attacks, just as he did in Syria. The only thing astonishingly stupid is your naiveté. The timing wasnt based on current american political events, but the arrival of him into Iraq.
No love,
An Iraq War Veteran. (And Liberal)
Tell me, again, what have you done?
@31
Everyone here who isn’t an Iraq war veteran did more praxis by not enlisting than any soldier. Taking part in an imperialist forever war isn’t laudable.
gregsneakel@31 Qassem Soleimani was in Iraq at least twice in the last several months, his October visit intended to provide advice to the Iraqi government.. Iran has diplomatic relations with Iraq, including consulates in several cities. https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/IRGCs-Qassem-Soleimani-visits-Baghdad-as-Iraqi-PM-resigns-report-609546
Those men with him? Presumably his security detail, for all the good it did him. Foreign dignitaries generally tend to have some sort of security detail with them even in places they consider friendly countries.
“No love”? Not even a little? That’s … sad, I guess.
How about you say what you’ve done? You seem to think being a veteran is somehow relevant, but I can’t make any sense of that.
Well, whatever…. I’ll just take my turn for now: I made coffee this morning, as I do almost every day. That’s what I have done.
Well, you are wrong on your facts.
Or delusional.
Or flat out lying.
.1. Qassem Soleimani didn’t sneak into Iraq.
He flew into Baghdad airport, got out, collected his luggage and started to drive into the city.
Like any other air traveler.
.2. He has been there before.
In fact, he has spent years there with the knowledge and consent of the Iraqi government.
The current Baghdad government is Shia and leans towards Iran.
Iran was an important ally to the Iraqi government when they were fighting ISIS.
.3. Here are some facts.
gregsneakel, don’t just rant and rave and make stuff up without worrrying about whether it is true or not.
That is what Trump and the GOP do.
Use Google and you know, look stuff up on the internet and read.
This is what second grade kids can do, so it should be a task within your capabilities.
@gregsneakel
As timgueguen pointed out above, we already know that Soleimani has been in Iraq consulting with the Iraqi government at least twice in the past. This time he had just landed at Baghdad airport. Ineffective though the Iraqi government may be at this time, it’s beyond unlikely that they wouldn’t know ahead of time that a high-ranking official from a friendly government was arriving at their main airport. He was there with their knowledge and approval. That makes my other points entirely relevant. An official and his bodyguard (because you really don’t have an “invasion force” in a two car convoy) do not constitute an invasion under any circumstances but especially not when they are ones who have friendly relations and contacts with a country’s government. The fact that Soleimani is responsible for running a whole set of Iranian proxies is irrelevant to this situation. The same could be said of some US officials who have run proxies that oppose the Iranian government as well. The fact that they’ve been more successful at it than we have is neither here nor there. We have assassinated a high-ranking official of another country within the borders of a (supposed) ally without their permission (and apparently without their prior knowledge) which is a direct act of war. It was stupid, short-sighted, and will have extremely poor outcomes for us across the entire region.
By the way, your status as an Iraq war veteran doesn’t seem to have given you any kind of insight into strategic and diplomatic matters, so I’m not sure why you keep throwing that around. I’ll put my ten years of doctoral education in strategic and military history up against that any day. And before you ask, I would have been too old to even volunteer for the Iraq war.
Oh, just when you think it can’t get any messier!
Juan Cole
https://www.juancole.com/2020/01/trump-troll-impeachment.html
@#24, raven:
Yes. Oh, absolutely yes. Our voter base is irrelevant, and our leadership is a passel of morons.
The default stance of most of the people who are not mainstream Republican politicians — like General Petraeus before being put in charge of Iraq and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and several other prominent figures, including Donald Trump in his campaign which should tell you something — was that we are capable of winning any war; the reason we keep losing is that we let stupid people (usually this is code for “Republicans”) be in charge, and if we put a smart person in charge instead, we will win. (According to multiple sources reported a while back by the NYT, Libya was supposed to be the proof of that, urged on by Hillary Clinton, which is why it completely dropped off the Democratic Party’s radar once it turned out to be another huge disaster.) It doesn’t matter how often “smart” wars turn out to be just as terrible as “dumb” ones, the mantra of these people is “I see what went wrong, let me take another shot at it”.
With one party committed to war as foreign policy and the other largely run by people who may not be committed to war as foreign policy but who do believe that it will work if they give it a chance, the stupidity is the only thing we are apparently permitted to vote for.
We in Australia are living in a HOT madhouse. Today feels apocalyptic just in itself. I don’t know of I will still have a house at yhe end of the day. To be facing in large part a consequence of the Trump-led failure to act on climate change and yhen discover he is deliberately setting out for a war with Iran is too much to take in just 3 days into a new year.
Disappointed you haven’t mentioned Australia PZ – you’ve been to Victoria, half of it is burning. And huge chunks of NSW, and significant amounts of the other states, and we are not half way through Summer yet.
One has to marvel at US foreign relations acumen. Assassinate a very senior, very politically powerful, and very famous, Iranian general in a closely allied country—at the capital’s airport while he was on an official visit—and assassinate a senior Iraqi general at the same time.
This is a level of incompetence and stupidity that even the US regime will find hard to surpass but it will. The foreign “experts” in Washington seem completely unhinged and unconnected to reality.
BTW, Americans can claim it was legal. The rest of the world, with the possible exception of Israel, will consider it murder by a rouge regime.
@#40, jkrideau:
In order of how the points occurred to me:
This was indeed “legal” (or at least arguably so, to the point where it won’t be possible to make anything stick). The disapproval of the rest of the world doesn’t matter on settling that point. (Heck, the disapproval of a good portion of us here in the US doesn’t matter.) Most of the world disapproves of China’s abrogation of copyright and patent laws, but since China is its own jurisdiction, that doesn’t make any of it illegal as long as it’s carried out over there.
I don’t think this was incompetence in the basic sense, although it was stupidity. This is what they intended to do, and they did it. In the horrible worldview of the modern-day Republican party, this was a reasonable step to take — and unfortunately, there isn’t as much of a gap between their worldview and that of their notional opposition. Look at Hillary Clinton’s famous comments on television about the death of Gaddafi, for example, or the way Bin Laden was not permitted to stand trial.
Even speaking as an American myself, I really can’t say whether the “average American” thinks this was a good idea. Certainly the smarter and/or better educated ones can see the enormous downsides and horrifying risks. But there’s a certain segment of the public which has always thought we should assassinate foreign leaders — Dave Barry (since he was the subject of a post here) suggested back under Reagan that we should assassinate foreign leaders by hiring the mob, and the context was very much “ha ha ha of course we shouldn’t hire the mob that’s ridiculous we should just kill them with the military”. Lots of people think like that about Putin and the North Korean leader du jour. (Never mind that we finally leaked documents that show that in the Korean War we did indeed use biological and chemical weapons against North Korea, which has been one of the “ha ha ha that’s a lie those North Korean leaders are a bunch of paranoid lying wackos for pushing such a conspiracy theory we’re just a bunch of big teddy bears really” ideas used as a propaganda point, or that we have invaded and overthrown practically every government we don’t “like” which hasn’t taken up a directly adversarial position.)
But to get back to your actual comment: this is one of the dangers of using “legal” as a yardstick to measure politicians. There are plenty of things which are legal which ought to be beyond the pale for a politician, or really for anybody who has to interact with society, but Americans have become accustomed to the idea that an act which is morally unspeakable but legally unassailable cannot be significantly criticized. (Republicans have always been that way, and have spent decades working to make more financial-fraud-type things “legal” which no decent person would want to see happen. Democrats are more recent converts, and it is possible to see the moment when the process took place — it was Bill Clinton’s impeachment. The only way to defend him was to drop back to “terrible but not illegal is acceptable” and the party has been stuck in that mode ever since.)
Really, though, this just gets back to the point on which I keep insisting: we in the US have become so completely willing to embrace policy which is not merely unethical but simply bad and stupid and wrong that we actually now prefer it. We chose Trump, collectively, as our leader, who is bad and stupid and wrong personified, and we didn’t even let Sanders — who has made a career of basically being right more often than anybody else, even if his average is still depressingly low — into the final contest, chosing a walking, talking anthropomorphization of the Dunning-Krueger Effect who has been pretty consistently wrong and bad and stupid as well to run against Trump instead.
(Oh, and although it doesn’t make any difference: that’s rogue.)
@Vicar
“Clinton, Clinton, Clinton, Democrats, Clinton” is your predictable response to any Trump outrage.
Together with your advocacy of abstention or third-party voting in 2016, you know what that makes you? A Trump supporter.
Ah yes. We must never criticize Mother. Democrats are sua sponte beyond reproach.
@Porivil Sorrens
Reading comprehension much? I never said that Clinton is beyond reproach. I merely pointed out that bringing her up in every Trump-disaster related article is a “tu quoque” form of deflection.
But hey, if you’re fine with defending fascist apologia, no skin off my nose. Just don’t whine about hurt feelings if people keep pointing in out.
Construing criticizing an incredibly flawed politician from the left in an attempt to point out the commonalities that mainstream Democrats have with Republicans as “fascist apologia” is some real moon logic.
I suppose we should just ignore that many of the things we criticize Republicans for happened just as much, if not moreso in certain cases, under Democratic presidencies?
If you think that Vicar is somehow attempting to diminish Trump’s actions, rather than showing that they’re part of a political pedigree that crosses the aisle, knowing full well what position they hold on the matter, you’re just straight up acting in bad faith and can be readily ignored.
Nope, it’s perfectly correct to point out that this kind of deflection in an article about Trump’s misdeeds is deflection.
And yes, that kind of deflection is diminishing Trump’s actions.
Really, you guys are willing to end up like the 21st century Ernst Thaelmann’s, decrying everyone to the right of you as social fascists, while cosying up to the real fascists. History was not kind on the 30’s KPD, and as someone actually living in an area that still bears the scars of the outcome of that kind of purity pony politics, I feel completely vindicated to apply the allegory and call you what you are: Trump fellow-travellers.
And as such, partly responsible for the current looming war. Not the hypothetical war that Hillary might have started, the war actually being prosecuted by the orange fascist you guys helped elect.
Ah yeah, I definitely helped elect Trump by voting for Hillary in a deep blue state. You realize that one can criticize both parties from the left while still being able to recognize that one is worse than the other, correct?
Like I said, though, you are acting in bad faith and can be readily ignored.
@porivil
The vicar ruitinely interject criticisism and deflection onto Hillary and the dems. He is always argueing in bad faith since the election. Leftists fucked up, were not smart enough to see that having two democratic presidents back to back would move the conversation to the left instead of the right, acted as prapaganda for the enemy by accussing with shoddy evidence (often from Russia) that Clinton and the dnc stole the election, and then instead of admitting failure continue to deflect.
Its why i abandoned the left because it became clear that its an identity more concerned with looking antiestablishmentarian than actually taking meanful steps to change the establishment.
When the tea party wanted the rnc to change they voted for it to happen. The left had the oportunity and decided “im not going to vote for the lesser of two evils” despite the fact that this is how change occurs.
Not sure why you think I’m going to care what someone who “abandoned the left” has to say, but you do you.
@Porivil
Your very first reply to me is to misstate my position and strawman me. You got quite the nerve to accuse others of bad faith.
Misstating someone else’s position, deflecting, DARVO: you even argue like a Republican.
@50
Bad faith statements don’t deserve good faith responses. Nothing Vicar said was incorrect, nor could be construed as “deflecting” by anyone with half a brain cell’s worth of reading comprehension. I have no reason to believe you are even hypothetically capable of good faith responses, so I’m treating you in accordance with that.
@Porivil
Thank you for proving the point.
@mvdwege:
Me: The Republicans are bad and stupid and evil, and the Democrats have abandoned any pretense of resisting them.
You: You’re deflecting to blame Democrats!!!!!!1!
You are a joke.
@Vicar:
Trump does something bad.
You: It’s the Democrats’ fault.
How the fuck is that not deflection?