Good Riddance to a Bad Man

The death of Qassem Suleimani is not an occasion to mourn.

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Dear Reader (and those who are merely reader-curious),

Qassem Suleimani is dead and I feel fine. 

He was a bad guy, and I don’t mean in the glib Good Guys vs. Bad Guys sense. I mean, he was literally a bad guy. I do not mourn for him. Indeed, even if it were to turn out (and I don’t think it will) that his killing was unlawful, bad policy, based on bad intelligence, or sold with lies, I would still not feel sympathy for Suleimani, because he did a dozen—two dozen? A thousand?—other things that would make almost any death overdue.

This is a point a lot of people seem to struggle with. Forget foreign policy for a second. Say Joe commits murder, but the police can’t prove it, so they end up framing Joe for the crime he committed, or even some other crime. Being outraged by such violations of due process is right and proper, and I have no quarrel with people who blow a gasket when things of this sort happen. But I don’t feel a lot of sympathy—any, really—for Joe. When you break all the rules, you may not have forfeited your legal right to complain when the authorities don’t follow them either, but you have forfeited your moral right to whine about it.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Pat Riot

    Since we're talking about complex military strategy and virtually unpredictable longterm outcomes, whether this was a good idea or not is a tomato/tomatto discussion.

    Rand Paul gave us his version, which I recall from his soundbite that the upsides are small (they will replace this guy and keep going) and the downsides are significant (this will give the anti-US hardliners in Iran a big victory).

    Where is Sen. Paul likely coming from? Maybe he's been on a lot of committees about this subject. Maybe he understands that it's an intractable situation: that we can't invade, and thus we can't permanently deter, and thus our *only real long-term hope* is that Iran fixes itself from within and joins the West.

    Hence, perhaps, his mindset is *only* focused on the situation *inside* or Iran. Where Trump's move just set us back a decade.

    Or maybe the Iranian people will get *scared* of the US instead? I can't see that effecting that many people since it was one guy and it was far away. If we started bombing Tehran you might count on some fear helping you, but I can't see this doing so. And meanwhile the opposite--anger--will be concentrated in precisely the areas of influence we don't want it to be, among the hard-core America-haters there.

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    Julie B

    Better Off Dead--"Two dollars!"

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    David M

    In the midst of this endless news cycle and crazy tweets from the President, I love Jonah's dog videos.

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    Butch Earl

    Jonah's view on the Iraq War is nearly identical to mine. I was willing to give the W. Bush administration the benefit of the doubt on the WMD evidence but, became dubious when the whole notion of a republican (the small 'r' is not a typo) Johnny Appleseed spreading western style democracy throughout the Middle East was put forth as a justification for maintaining a large presence there. However, the John Kerry/Rand Paul (yes they do have much in common on foreign policy) false narrative that goes something like, "American people, you have a choice: passivity or World War III" has since dominated debate on the Middle East.

    I've always believed another word for a problem is an opportunity. There is a possibility the potential of American lives at stake in our current struggle with Islamic terrorism may bust through the partisan divide in the Trumposphere in this election/impeachment year and lead to a genuine debate on America's role in the world in the new decade. I come down on the side that "endless wars" are more likely when the credible use of American power is removed from the table and hope that will not happen when the inevitable retaliation for the Suleimani strike occurs. However, I'm also willing to listen to cogently presented alternative positions.

    Is my belief in this problem turning into an opportunity as much of a pipe dream as a Jeffersonian Middle East? We'll see.

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    Peter A

    My initial response to the morality of convicting anyone using a minority report device is to reject the premise of 100% accuracy. Using that standard we may as well have hypotheticals where we're all angels. Without a flaw, where's the debate?
    Thinking further, my real objection is that if someone were raised in a world where crime is known completely before it happens, the culture would morph to where those criminal actions become unthinkable. It would be the reverse of what we're experiencing with mass shootings. It goes against human nature. Bad science fiction.

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