The Assassination of Soleimani, Chocolate Cake and Cruise Missiles, and the Heartbreaking Arrogance of the Creature from Mar-A-Lago

His response sums up American foreign military policy in a nutshell: fuck you, pay up or die. Sixteen years of war, military occupation, and immeasurable tragedy, destruction, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis brought upon by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Trump demands they pay up or else face the consequences. Iraqis have already paid the ultimate price. We have shattered their country, maimed their people, poisoned their land, while American weapons corporations made a killing in the process.   We should be down on our knees apologizing from the bottom of our hearts and seeking the forgiveness of God and the mothers of the children whom we have slaughtered over decades of exercising corrupt and inimical positions of aggression and greed, administration after administration.  Instead, we have the audacity to threaten a poor and broken nation, the very nation we have ourselves crippled, with further vengeance and sanctions if they exercise their right to freedom by seeing us out.  This “keep the oil” extortion mindset is not only pitiful, despicable, and heartless – it is evil. 

Hardly a week into the new decade and here we go again – another year, another dipshit President, another major war in the Middle East.   To be fair, a full-blown war has yet to begin, but even before the attacks from Iran on U.S. military bases in Iraq, even before the dust settled vis-à-vis the see this most excellent Liberty Report episode leading up to the degree of Iranian influence in the siege of the U.S Embassy in Bagdad and an understanding had been established as to why general Qasem Soleimani had landed (see this most excellent Liberty Report episode), war seem very probable after the general was killed in an airstrike signed off on by President Trump.  What is it with Donald Trump lobbing missiles from his golf course Mar-a-Lago?  The last time Trump ordered an attack that pushed the world to the brink of WWIII was also at his south Florida resort in April, 2017 when he was eating chocolate cake with the President of China and decided to launch 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria.  Incidentally, it now turns out that that attack was likely based off of lies and/or a false flag military operation (see here, here, and here).  

Suffering from amnesia, and appearing to exhibit signs of total insanity/inanity and doublethink in backwards land (i.e, claiming that their airstrike on one of Iran’s top generals was to prevent war: “We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war.”), present Trump has failed to take the tweet advice from past Trump:

Trump on Nov. 16, 2011:

“Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected — and as sure as you're sitting there — is to start a war with Iran.” pic.twitter.com/usZFLiHnBw

— JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) January 3, 2020

Here’s a map showing U.S military bases surrounding Iran.  

Map from Antiwar.com

In response to the killing of Soleimani, the Iraqi Parliament voted on a non-binding resolution to expel the U.S military and other coalition forces from Iraq.  The resolution states, “The government commits to revoke its request for assistance from the international coalition fighting Islamic State due to the end of military operations in Iraq and the achievement of victory… The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason.”

The resolution five-point action plan states:

 1. To oblige the Iraqi government to cancel the request for assistance from the international coalition fighting against ISIS, due to the end of the military and war operations in Iraq and achieved victory and freedom of the areas.
2. The Iraqi government must do everything to stop the presence of all foreign forces on its soil and ban them from using its air, land and water space for any reason.
3. The Iraqi government and foreign ministry must submit a complaint to the United Nations against the US for violating the country’s sovereignty and security.
4. The Iraqi government should also conduct investigations at the highest possible level to identify the ambiguities of the US bombing and report the results to the House of Representatives within seven days of the ruling.
5. This decision is effective from the date of voting.

Trump’s response to our sovereign ally and the Iraqi democratic process that America fought and overthrew Saddam Hussein to implement  was to say that we would not leave unless we were paid to do so, and that if Iraq expelled us without compensation we would levy sanctions on them.  He said, “We've spent a lot of money in Iraq… We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s there. It cost billions of dollars to build. ... We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it." Adding, we wouldn’t leave on a "very friendly basis" if they tried to kick us out. The U.S. invasion of "We will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever.  It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame."

His response sums up American foreign military policy in a nutshell: fuck you, pay up or die. Sixteen years of war, military occupation, and immeasurable tragedy, destruction, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis brought upon by the U.S invasion of Iraq, Trump demands they pay up or else face the consequences. Iraqis have already paid the ultimate price. We have shattered their country, maimed their people, poisoned their land, while American weapons corporations made a killing in the process.   We should be down on our knees apologizing from the bottom of our hearts and seeking the forgiveness of God and the mothers of the children whom we have slaughtered over decades of exercising corrupt and inimical positions of aggression and greed, administration after administration.  Instead, we have the audacity to threaten a poor and broken nation, the very nation we have ourselves crippled, with further vengeance and sanctions if they exercise their right to freedom by seeing us out.  This “keep the oil” extortion mindset is not only pitiful, despicable, and heartless – it is evil. 

Trump’s arrogance was also on display when he said that he has a list of 52 cultural sites in Iran – a country with a rich and important history many times older that America’s – that he would strike if Iran retaliated.   Why would he want to destroy such historical sites and religious monuments when little to no strategic military advantage would be achieved in doing so?  Only a monster would threaten such acts and mean them.  Do you know who too wiped-out religious sites?  ISIS.  Apparently Trump has since retracted his threat, but that hardly salvages his morality. 

I leave you with a video I uploaded to YouTube recently.  It’s an excerpt from the 1/5/20 Sunday Wire news broadcast in which Patrick Henningsen breaks down the basis for all the current turmoil. The video that follows is some footage of a march in Iran following the news Solemani’s death.