Amid swirling headlines, did Iran get lost?

Bill Knight column for 2-6, 7 or 8, 2020

The Senate’s travesty of a trial for Trump, the tragedy of Kobe Bryant’s death, a series of earthquakes and volcanos, Super Bowl-winning Chiefs and World Series-cheating Astros, Australia ablaze, the coronavirus, and the Doomsday Clock; they’ve all dominated our attention for weeks.

What about Iran?

A month ago President Trump ordered a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone to attack vehicles leaving the airport in Baghdad, Iraq, an airstrike that killed 10 people, including Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a powerful figure and one responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans and thousands of others throughout the Mideast.

Within days, Iran downed a Ukrainian airliner to widespread condemnation (few recalled the U.S. similarly destroying an Iranian airliner in 1988). Anti-regime protests in Iran faded in outrage against America. The U.S.-installed government in neighboring Iraq voted to expel U.S. troops, and other countries, from NATO allies to China and Russia, denounced the killing. Iran launched missiles at two Iraqi bases hosting U.S. forces and injured dozens of U.S. troops, thousands of Americans were sent to the region, Trump announced new economic sanctions against Iran, and he even threatened Iran’s cultural sites.

            January 25’s nationwide “Day of Action” opposing war with Iran mostly went unnoticed despite rallies in Chicago and college towns including Bloomington/Normal, Carbondale and Champaign/Urbana.

            Is little notice due to distraction? Exhaustion?

In 17+ years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq (where Iranian forces were ALLIED against both the Taliban and ISIS), Americans made sacrifices of time, talent and treasure: countless casualties and untold costs.

But there IS an accounting: $6.4 trillion and 801,000 total deaths by the end of Fiscal Year 2020, according to Brown University.

Still, Americans are as divided about Iran as they are polarized about politics. The public is split, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll; 47 percent disapprove of the president’s actions concerning Iran, but 45 percent approve. (Trump’s public support isn’t good overall, with 51% disapproving and 44 percent approving.)

Trump’s order to assassinate a sovereign country’s military leader was based on uncertain intelligence and flimsy rationales without involving Congress. Sen. Tim Kaine and Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin introduced measures to stop escalation under Congress’ War Powers Act, and no proof’s been shared, angering conservative Republican Senators Mike Lee and Rand Paul, and also centrist Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, a Marine who served in Iraq and earned a Bronze Star.

“If there is intelligence that shows this strike prevented a new and imminent threat to Americans, I have yet to see it,” Moulton said. “I fought in a war a president started because of cooked and false intelligence; we cannot let this Administration repeat that mistake.”

Moulton warned military officers about phony justifications for deadly force.

“Look very carefully at every order given to you by this president,” Moulton said. “It is our duty to make sure everything done in the name of the United States military is lawful; and that burden falls on us. ... We have an opportunity to call on our military officers around the world to bring new scrutiny to their sworn oath to obey lawful orders, and only lawful orders.”

The Wall Street Journal on Jan. 9 detailed Trump’s decision to kill Soleimani, reporting (buried in a lengthy story) that it was for Senate Republicans who’d judge his impeachment.

“Trump, after the strike, told associates he was under pressure to deal with Gen. Soleimani from GOP senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial,” according to the newspaper.

Someone whose actions have faced few consequences in his life, from military service and marriage infidelity to business failures and prejudices, Trump exploits his (growing) power, succumbs to flattery and throws tantrums like a toddler. That exists alongside cronies’ long-time thirst for oil, from 1953 (when the CIA engineered a coup toppling Iran’s elected president Mohammad Mossadegh) to a recent craving for an oil field Iran discovered in November (one with 53 billion barrels of crude).

As the USA seems to slide slowly toward authoritarianism, George Orwell’s “1984” becomes more relevant. Its Chapter III, “War is Peace,” is particularly noteworthy: “By becoming continuous, war has fundamentally changed ... War is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.”

Decades later, progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is sharing her doubts with moderate and conservative colleagues, commenting, “War is a class conflict, too. The rich and powerful who open war escape the consequences of their decisions. It’s not their children sent into the jaws of violence.”

Trump doesn’t care; he’s only ever had one interest: himself.