Thinking Too Much of Ourselves

A criticism of criticism. The fellow is from Brookings, which is institutionally suspect on Middle Eastern issues because it receives vast funding from Qatar; however, I see little wrong with the major point he's making on this occasion.

Those who said there will be war may not have realized there already was war.... Iran... may find new ways to escalate, but Iran had already been escalating. The regime of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, with its Iranian patrons, led by Soleimani, has been waging a brutal assault on Syrians for more than eight years. War, in short, has been happening—costing hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians their lives—since long before Donald Trump ordered the drone strike against Soleimani.

In the aftermath of the strike, critics of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, particularly on the left, have described the move as one more rash American intervention that’s sure to further destabilize the region. Yet this formulation gives U.S. policy, for all its flaws, too much credit. Not everything is America’s fault; others are sometimes to blame; and no one, not even the weaker parties, are devoid of agency or freed of responsibility. The burden of de-escalation does not fall entirely on the United States; Iran, too, can choose to de-escalate.

Actually, his minor point is pretty good too.

There is also the problem of Trump himself. Because killing Soleimani was very much his decision—reflecting the impulsiveness and disarray a decision by him implies—it seems fair to assume that one’s view of the president will affect how one interprets the fallout from Soleimani’s killing. Correcting for subconscious bias isn’t easy, but at the very least, observers should be aware of the Trump effect.

Well, indeed. One might begin trying to correct for this particular one by examining how one responded to President Obama's very regular targeted killings -- or whether you felt like the War Powers Act was being openly flaunted by Team Obama in its decision to overthrow Libya for no apparent reason.

Maybe Major General Solemani was higher profile than most of Obama's victims -- though he was a Major General out of uniform, operating in a foreign country while under UN travel sanctions and US State and Treasury designation as the terrorist head of a terrorist organization that is itself a subset of a terrorist organization. He wasn't a higher profile victim than Qaddafi, though; and President Trump didn't overthrow a whole country just to get at him.

Speaking of which, Turkey is apparently moving forces into Libya to try to quell the remaining fires of the civil war Obama kicked off nine years ago. They have, of course, chosen to back the wrong side; but it's also the side Obama had picked, quite a few of whom were al Qaeda affiliates in the grand days of that movement. The Trump administration doesn't seem to care about Libya one way or the other, and will likely let the Turks decide the issue if they are able. Trump, at least, doesn't share the opinion that America is indispensable to these conflicts.