January 4

Jan 05, 2020

More details are emerging about Trump’s decision to assassinate Qassem Soleimani and his entourage. Apparently, the evidence that there was a specific plot afoot to attack Americans was, as one observer put it, “razor thin.” Instead, assassinating Soleimani was a “far out” option advisors presented to Trump to make other responses to the attack on the Baghdad embassy seem more measured. To their surprise, he chose that option, apparently—at this point; we still are operating much in the dark—out of deep concern that the attack on the embassy would be seen as his “Benghazi.” Rukmini Callimachi, New York Times reporter covering ISIS and al-Qaeda, concludes that this attack cannot be decoupled from the impeachment crisis.

It appears that the idea that there was an imminent attack was an attempt to justify the assassination after the fact. Today, the White House notified Congress about the attack (the president has 48 hours after an attack to tell Congress, although presidents almost always inform the Gang of 8 ahead of time, and, by the way, the Gang of 8 is sworn to secrecy and does not leak, so the excuse you’re hearing that Trump didn’t notify Congress because it would tell the Iraqis is, frankly, BS). The White House took the unusual step of classifying the entire briefing, making it impossible to have a public discussion of the reasons for this attack.

Led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrats criticized the notification, saying that it “raises more questions than it answers.” Pelosi said: “This document prompts serious and urgent questions about the timing, manner and justification of the Administration’s decision to engage in hostilities against Iran. The highly unusual decision to classify this document in its entirety compounds our many concerns, and suggests that the Congress and the American people are being left in the dark about our national security." She urged the president to give Congress a full briefing on the military engagement and what it planned as a “clear and legitimate strategy” to de-escalate the growing conflict.

Our former allies in Europe are not supporting the assassination, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo complained to Fox News personality Sean Hannity about their disapproval, insisting that this strike had made the world safer.

For his part, Trump took to Twitter, claiming to have targeted “52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!”

Attacking cultural sites is a war crime. As former US Ambassador Michael McFaul tweeted: “ISIS targets cultural sites. The Taliban destroys cultural sites. The United States of America should not join this list.” He begged the State Department and the Department of Defense to “roll back this horrific statement” and “make clear that we will not target Iranian cultural sites."

Meanwhile, 3,500 more of our sons and daughters in uniform are headed for Iraq.

In all this, two things stand out for this political historian First, Trump is continuing to press his insistence that he can act unilaterally, this time bringing American close to-- and possibly into-- a hot war. Until he provides solid information and a clear plan for moving forward, we should see this attack as part of his growing authoritarianism.

Second, the president chose a maximally distracting response to the attack on the American embassy in Baghdad, surprising even his advisors, who apparently had laid out the assassination as a far out option to increase the attractiveness of more measured responses. The evidence does not suggest that there was any need for this extreme a response right now… which suggests that he chose it to distract from impeachment.

And distract it has. Headlines around the country are all about the assassination, and Trump supporters, fed heavily by bots and trolls, are swamping public media with support for the president. They are trying to overawe all debate over the wisdom of the attack, and over Trump’s decision to launch it without informing Congress, both of which are quite legitimate concerns. If you have been watching, you will see that my professional Facebook page, even, which is generally remarkably free of trolls, has been so swamped that it took me more than an hour tonight to clean up the comments on a single post. This is a colossal waste of my time, as it is intended to be, so that pro-Trump trolls will eventually make it impossible to cull them, and thus they can swing public debate away from what had been growing support for his removal from office.

Trump and his team appear to be doing anything they can to harden up his base before an approaching trial… a trial that Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro today suggested to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)-- who took Russian money from indicted political operative Lev Parnas (why is he still in office?)-- was no longer viable because the statute of limitations for impeachment had passed. (This is delusional.)

If you weren’t being careful, you could almost forget that in the last week, new evidence has shown that Trump himself ordered the withholding of congressionally mandated aid to Ukraine, that his own advisors knew it was illegal, and that he has flat out refused a subpoena requiring him to release 20 crucial emails about this issue.

But I am being careful.

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Notes:

Evidence: