Over the last couple of days we've been treated to one of the most ludicrous arguments ever advanced in the history of American politics. In the wake of the drone strike on Iranian terrorist leader Qasam Soleimani, recall, the Iranians launched a missile barrage against American targets in Iraq. The attack was deliberately intended to harm no one, but the Iranians were prepared for an American response nonetheless.
When a Ukrainian airliner with 176 people aboard took off from Tehran airport a couple of hours later, Iranian anti-aircraft batteries evidently mistook it for an American cruise missile or bomber and shot it down. At least this is where the evidence so far seems to point. All 176 passengers and crew were killed.
It was a tragic error, but in the hours and days since that disaster President Trump's critics (see here and here) have advanced the thesis that it is he who is responsible for the shootdown, or that he at least bears partial responsibility for the deaths of those people. This is so risible an allegation that one wonders how it is that anyone can make it and keep a straight face.
It's Trump's fault, his detractors claim, because by killing Soleimani he initiated an exchange with Iran that led to heightened tensions and the hair-trigger response of a poorly prepared Iranian missile crew.
There are at least three problems with this:
1. The claim that Mr. Trump started hostilities completely ignores the reason why Soleimani was targeted in the first place. It ignores the fact that intelligence revealed that he was planning attacks on Americans in Iraq and Syria. It ignores the fact that six hundred servicemen were killed and thousands of others were maimed in the aftermath of the Iraq war by roadside bombs supplied by Soleimani for precisely that purpose. It ignores the recent attack on our embassy in Iraq and ignores the fact that Soleimani was in Iraq illegally.
It ignores the fact that last month, a U.S. defense contractor was killed and others were wounded in an Iran-linked rocket attack in northern Iraq. In response, the U.S. military carried out “precision defensive strikes” in Iraq and Syria, on sites housing Kataeb Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Iraqi militia. The strikes killed 25 fighters.
Days later, hundreds of protesters, including members of Iranian-backed militias, stormed the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad—one of the most heavily fortified U.S. diplomatic missions in the world. The attack raised the specter of the 2012 Benghazi attack in which four Americans died.
2. The responsibility for the deaths of those airline passengers and crew rests solely with the Iranian military. They made the decision to fire the rocket without confirming the identity of the airplane. President Trump had nothing to do with it.
3. The critics' are making an argument the logic of which is of this sort: A thug threatens to shoot a pedestrian on a city street. A policeman in defense of the pedestrian shoots the thug who staggers to his car, gets behind the wheel and promptly collides with another vehicle causing injury and death in the other vehicle. According to President Trump's critics the cop is responsible for those deaths because he shot the thug. If he hadn't shot him, the critic argues, there would've been no collision.
According to this reasoning criminals on the streets and terrorists around the world should be able to work their despicable deeds with impunity because if we defend ourselves against them, who knows what harm may ensue?
It's depressing that we live in a time when not only does an attack on the world's top terrorist need to be defended (By the way, did Obama have to defend killing Osama bin Laden? Why not? How was killing Soleimani more egregious than killing bin Laden?), but also in a time when Americans are more interested in blaming their president for a tragic mistake made by another country than they are in condemning that nation's government for creating a climate of terrorism and instability which leads to such mistakes being made.