Trump, Iran, and Where ‘The Forever War’ Was Always Headed

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-iran-and-where-the-forever-war-was-always-headed
 

The more plausible reason Trump killed Soleimani is the one administration officials kept coming back to after being challenged on the intelligence and the strategy. It was one Bush adopted about Saddam to dismiss similar pre-invasion questions. 

Soleimani was an evil man, Iran is an aggressive state, and America reserves for itself the right to kill people on that basis. The “terrorist” Soleimani–so designated by Trump, following in yet another post-9/11 tradition–”not only caused enormous death and destruction throughout the region, killed hundreds of Americans over the years, but had done so in the past couple of days, killed an American on December 27th,” Pompeo told Brennan. 

In other words, America was settling a 40-year-old score. As Jeremy Scahill detailed for the Intercept, many on the right, from neoconservatives to nationalists, have never been comfortable with leaving Iran out of the war on terrorism. Many consider Bush’s 2002 characterization of Iran as part of an “Axis of Evil” a bold move that he unfortunately backed away from acting upon. They seethed as Iran faced no consequence for exploiting the Iraq occupation to kill and maim U.S. troops with powerful roadside bombs–something else that blurred the distinction between Iran and the war on terrorism.

The insistence on Soleimani as the incarnation of Iran’s evil has additional utility. It seeks to intimidate those who oppose the assassination and portray them as terrorist sympathizers, morally bankrupt, inauthentically American, and contemptuous of a suppressed people’s struggle for freedom. That worked exceptionally well for the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11. Democrats, sensing a vengeful national mood, opted for complicity or silence. Trump and his allies are running the play again.