Friday, January 3, 2020

Soleimani will not rest in peace

Photo of drone with missile
By Brigadier Lance Mans, Deputy Director, NATO Special Operations Coordination Centre - http://www.ifpafletcherconference.com/2010/powerpoint/Lance_Mans-Day2-final4web.ppt, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10359624

We will all remember where we were when we heard that General Qasem Soleimani had been killed by a US bombing near the Baghdad International Airport.

I was walking out the door to an Al-Anon meeting when my husband told me.  I watched the television news for a moment and said, "It's an act of war."

I pushed it from my mind for two hours, but back home I listened to the news, tweeted, and followed comments on Twitter. I went to bed and turned out the lights at 2 am but picked up my phone again and continued reading and tweeting until 5:30 am, keenly aware that it was 8:30 am in Washington, D.C., and 4:30 pm in Baghdad.  

The Los Angeles emergency services tweeted that there was no credible threat toward Los Angeles.  That's not reassuring--it's just evidence that we are in a new reality, a world in which the US is waging war against Iran.  The Iranian response could happen anywhere, any time.

In one fell swoop, dt started a war, knocked down stock markets, ballooned the budget deficit, cancelled the 2020 budget appropriated by Congres, overshadowed his impeachment, and assured his own re-election, as he predicted President Obama would do in 2011.

His bravado will cause many deaths among Middle Eastern people, US soldiers and sailors, and American civilians in the US.

One foolish man ordered the attack, but all of us and our children will bear the consequences.

Thank you to all the experts who are analyzing this mess and reporting to us on various media.

  • Michael McFaul, former ambassador to Russia
  • Wendy Sherman, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
  • Rukmini Callimachi, correspondent to the New York Times from the Middle East
  • Richard Engel, chief foreign correspondent for NBC News

and many others.








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