(I started this post last weekend – but real life and a new book project intervened. Consider this a footnote to Trent T.’s post, here.)
Well, it certainly came a’calling for Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani last week, Middle Eastern time. Nothing left but bits of scrap metal and meat, and a bruised hand with a large ring on it. Kind of fitting for the guy who perfected the fine art of IEDs, and brought so much business to the developers of artificial limbs for those survivors of that deadly art. As the satirist Tom Leher noted, so many decades ago, and in a slightly different context,
“Some have harsh words for this man of renown,
But some think our attitude
Should be one of gratitude,
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Werner von Braun.”
So it seems that the late General Soleimani will not be missed … not missed much by an assortment of parties in Iran, the Middle East, Israel, and US State Department employees across the world, some of whom posted their congratulations in the first blog reports that I saw first thing. The Daughter Unit reports that most of the veteran social media participants were absolutely fizzing with glee, as were apparently Iranian anti-mullacracy exile communities across the world. Considering that the late General S. had a hand in nearly four decades of Islamic violence (violence which racked up casualties in the thousands, and which did include American troops), across the Middle East and was about to take a hand in fomenting some more in Iraq last week, he will definitely not be missed.
The remote pilot of the drone which dropped our final farewell gift upon him didn’t miss, either, although to read the Twitter caterwauling laments of Hollywood idiots like Rose McWhatserface is nearly enough to make one upchuck. The trauma of being sexually molested by a creep like Harvey Weinstein obviously blotted from what remains of her tiny mind the reality of things like … umm, Iran’s forty-year jihad against the US, beginning with overrunning our embassy in Teheran and keeping staff, employees and casual American visitors to said embassy captive for more than a year? In the old days, an attack on a foreign embassy counted as declaring war. It fries me no end that the Teheran embassy thing happened so long ago that I was in my first Air Force enlistment, and my daughter was born a couple of months later. That’s how long we’ve been waiting for anything like an appropriate response.
And Jimmy Carter was such a clueless, limp-d*cked, Saudi-loving, anti-Semitic wimp that he couldn’t even countenance the appropriate response, which should rightfully have been along the lines of “Release our people and vacate our embassy (and clean up the mess as you go) or various essential real estate of yours will become slightly radioactive glass. Counting down… three … two…” THAT response would have spared us all especially in the Middle East decades of trouble, but morons like failed novelist Ben Rhodes certainly wouldn’t grasp that point, being twenty something, or perhaps older now, and still dealing with equally educated idiots. And as for ostensibly American news media painting, certain celebs and politicians painting the late General in romantic shades of “able soldier, handsome charismatic leader, an inspiration to his troops, austere poet, snappy dresser and all-around-good-fellow…” People, do you have any comprehension of how that makes you appear to the rest of us? It’s as of you are lamenting and condemning the death of Reinhold Heydrich, who was also cultured, handsome, a charismatic leader, et cetera, et cetera and every bit as much a murderous a**hole as Qasem Soleimani. Is this truly what you wish to embrace, and to appear to the rest of us as a sympathizer of? Discuss as you wish, and add any insights.
The Democrats are taking a risk by acting as Iran’s defense lawyers in this.
There are two land mines in the path of Democrats in 2020. One is Biden’s son, if he is the nominee.
The other is their embrace of Iran as a neutral actor when we have had 40 years of “Death to America.”
The thing about the General Qasem Soleimani killing — and the Democrat Party’s lock step condemnation of Pres. Trump for doing it — is how it demonstrates the “Blue Island” mono-culture the Democrat Party has become.
Case in point from 2007:
One rural county in Texas supplied ten times the number of total members of the military in 2007 than the entire city of OAKLAND.
Twenty vs two. Yes, Oakland only had two people volunteer for military service in a 2007. At least volunteer AND meet the standards to include a lack of criminal drug arrests.
Oakland had nearly fifty times its population of that rural Texas county.
And that year the #1 and #2 military recruitment states were California and Texas respectively. Effectively the American military predominantly recruits from Rural/Exurban localities that haven’t had their public schools collapse.
Red states and counties poured out their blood after 9/11/2001, got sick of Bush in 2006, and got Obama for their payment in 2008.
These are the voters who stayed home in 2012 for Romney and voted Trump in 2016 to flip places like Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
How do you think that lock step support of Iran and General Qasem Soleimani is playing in those places?
This is a good example —
Congressman Who Lost Legs to IED Walks to Podium to Torch Dems for Being ‘Cowards’ After Soleimani Hit
https://pjmedia.com/trending/congressman-who-lost-legs-to-ied-walks-to-podium-to-torch-dems-for-being-cowards-after-soleimani-hit/
This sort of GOP political attack is going to leave a mark.
It isn’t just Trump who is now “Waving The Blood Shirt” on General Soleimani and unified Democratic Party conduct on same.
Given the state Congressman Brian Mast is from (Florida) and his story, expect him to be prime time in Trump’s Presidential nomination convention on Monday night.
What we are seeing with Rep. Mast is a political/cultural pattern being established in exactly the way the GOP “Waving The Blood Shirt” at the Democrat Party for 30-years after the American Civil War.
The question is: How long are we going to be willing or even able to spend the treasure and lives to pluck the weeds from among the tender shoots instead of plowing and sowing the ground with salt in self defense?
I think there’s a non-trivial chance that the current protests could seriously threaten the mullah’s regime. The real question is whether whoever has replaced Salami Man has the same ability and ruthlessness to get the IRGC to massacre their countrymen.
Brian, the reports through blogs and social media that Iranians and Iranian exiles were celebrating “Salami Man’s” death would indicate that. He was seen as a vicious oppressor, every bit as nasty and brutal as Heydrich was … it makes the embrace of him by the international elite class (the anti-Trump element of them) even more disgusting.
Sgt.Mom
He was seen as a vicious oppressor, every bit as nasty and brutal as Heydrich was …it makes the embrace of him by the international elite class (the anti-Trump element of them) even more disgusting.
Most media sources have acknowledged that “Salami Man” was responsible for the death of ~600 US troops in Iraq, and most likely had a hand in the hundreds-to 1500 of his countrymen killed in the recent unrest in Iran. What is usually ignored is that as he led Iran’s efforts in the civil war in Syria, he bears a lot of responsibility for the ~500,000 killed in Syria. If Iran had stayed out of Syria, I doubt as many would have been killed. In addition, I get the impression that Salami Man couldn’t have gotten away with the “following orders” schtick, as he was among the leading architects- and probably the leading architect- of Iranian foreign policy.
There are massive protests right now sparked by the admission of the airline shootdown. So now the people have a prime example of regime incompetence murdering almost 200 people, which is somehow worse than them murdering dissidents because it means even if you keep your head down they can still kill you, and it says to the enforcers that the top bosses aren’t infallible. And without Salami Man to give the shoot-to-kill orders, that may cause them to hesitate, or even defect, which will mean the end.
And without Salami Man to give the shoot-to-kill orders, that may cause them to hesitate, or even defect, which will mean the end.
Maybe so, but his successor is just as thuggish.
https://mobile.twitter.com/MPPregent/status/1214144984049471488
Well Ismael Ghaani should have the same big bullseye on his chest. Sounds like it couldn’t happen to a nicer feller.
The shoot down of Iran Air Flight 655 by USS Vincennes (CG-49) is a founding myth of the Iranian Islamic Republic.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
The shoot down of the Ukrainian airliner by the IRGC immediately following the assassination of General Soleimani is hugely destructive of both the legitimacy of the Mullah Regime after decades of Iran Air flight 655 propaganda as well as fear of the Regime’s IRGC security force.
Showing stupidity, arrogance, and myth destroying incompetence all in the same week in a country already in “pre-revolutionary conditions” will not end well…
…Hopefully that means for the Mullahs.
Trent: I hope you’re right, but if around a million dead in the war with Iraq wasn’t enough, I’m not optimistic.
One might pay attention to your chief prosecutor at Nuremberg. He is 100 this year:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/opinion/letters/us-iran-killing.html
Sgt Mom,you had me at Tom Lehrer.
Wanna get Married?
An intriguing offer, Trumpeter – which I will take into active consideration. ;-)