SULEIMANI IS NOW A CORPSE: ARE WE NEXT?

by Francis Baumli, Ph.D.

    Iran’s top General (and Quds commander) Qassem Suleimani, along with two other top generals and several other military officers, were killed by a U.S. airstrike at the Baghdad airport early Friday January 3, 2020. Our President Trump ordered this airstrike which involved firing four guided missiles from a Reaper drone. This “very Presidential” action made Trump’s day, even though it ended many other people’s lives.

     For Trump this seems to be business as usual, i.e., more of his lifelong malice as usual. When Trump was a small child, according to the accounts of his adult neighbors, he enjoyed throwing rocks at little children in playpens (The Making of Donald Trump by David Cay Johnston, p. 17). His plots and ploys as he moved up in the business world are well documented, as are his salacious comments about, and his overt sexual harassment of, girls and women. After he became President, he canceled the nuclear limitations deal with Iran—known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—on May 8, 2018. This agreement had been finalized in July of 2015 after being negotiated by President Obama, but Trump canceled this deal for no apparent motive other than vindictive racism against his black predecessor, President Barack Obama. So now, instead of throwing rocks at children in playpens, he throws missiles at top generals in a foreign country, with justifications so rhetorical and vapid as to elude being paraphrased.

     Now, although Trump has been impeached, there is no chance of unseating him because the Republican Senate has pledged Trump their support. As a result we are in a situation which Nancy Pelosi, Democrat Speaker of the House, describes as a Constitutional roadblock because, whereas our founding fathers set up the impeachment process since they knew we might someday be dealing with a rogue President, they did not anticipate that we might someday be dealing with a rogue Senate.

     Meanwhile, military tensions with Iran mount, the Iranian government has vowed a “crushing revenge” and has pledged “jihad.” I suspect that because of the killing of General Suleimani hundreds of militants, who before had been vaguely considering a suicide bombing against the United States “someday,” will angrily decide that now is the time.

     The U.S. is contaminated by a President who is a sociopath, a Senate who supports him no matter how erratic and dangerous he is, and worst of all, a populace that got Trump and “his” Senate into office. So Iran is in a state of extreme peril and the U.S. is too.

     The day will soon come when Trump will be ordered to appear before the House to answer many questions. But now he can gleefully proclaim, “Not yet, peons. I am too busy conducting a war against another shithole country.”

     How will his blueblood Senators react to this? I suspect they will smile and applaud.