US derangement is revealed by the absurd question — "Was killing General Soleimani legal?"
© 2020 Peter Free
06 January 2019
Complete insanity — are we there yet?
Click on this link — to see a sampling of the abundant media headlines that propose that killing Iranian general Qassem Soleimani was legal, or perhaps debatably so.
Evidently
US-sponsored murder, which would have been unheard of when I was young, is acceptable now. Insofar (of course) as it is confined to "godly" American hands.
The currently circulating legality question reveals moral depravity that should shock anyone with a gram of self-aware judgment.
In the 1950s, Americans took it for granted that state-sponsored murder by our side was ethically and legally unacceptable. No one would even have formulated a question that hypothesizes the reverse.
To put modern US hypocrisy into perspective
Any one of the last two decades pf American Middle East combatant commanders — as well as their commanders in chief — could be legitimately counted as way worse than Qassem Soleimani ever dreamed of being.
That's just according to the huge numbers of innocent dead they left in their wakes.
Consider alone the Iraq, Libyan and Yemen wars. Not to mention absurdly continuing death-dealing in Afghanistan.
Yet, no American seriously thinks that it would be legitimate for Iranian drones to come over here and whack one of our arguable war criminals.
Nevertheless, for some perversely originated American "exceptionalism" reason, it is okay for us to pick some high-ranking "foreign" officer and obliterate him from existence.
All on the basis of (usually falsely) concocted crimes of one kind or another.
Notice, here, that the White House and American media claim that Soleimani was planning attacks on American personnel. Without advancing a whisper of evidence to support this allegation. And without grappling with ethically pertinent questions regarding imminence, scale and proportion.
Note
We can thank President George W. Bush for sliding the acceptability of cowardice-based preemptive war past those constraining queries.
The moral? — If American culture can be legitimately called one thing, it is "immorally deranged"
When US announcements and military actions make a mockery of foundational ethics, there is evidently nothing that we will not stoop to.
Just wait until the Power Shoe is (inevitably) on the other foot.
What then?
We gonna whine about unfairness and injustice, while foreign drones buzz overhead, frequently zapping allegedly evil someone(s) in our midst?
Our imperialistic, grossly immoral historical record will not have a thing to say in our defense. Hypocrisy eventually cuts two ways.
It is a pity that the nastily deluded (even evil) American folk who constructed these abominations will all have died rich and content. Leaving their grand and great-grand kids to suffer the consequences.
Typical, no?
That's why Hell would indeed be a valuable addition to the Known Universe.