I’ve worked for United States intelligence agencies throughout the last decade using narrative analysis to determine the motivations and likely future behavior of terrorists and rogue nations. In projects for the NRO, NSA, and CIA (among others) much of work touched on Iran and its influence in the middle east.
One cannot judge the need to assassinate a foreign leader solely on the basis of how many deaths he has caused, such as the deaths of Americans at the hands of Qasem Soleimani. For example, deaths of middle eastern civilians by the U.S. during operations are significantly higher than those American deaths attributed to Soleimani. (See link to an article at the bottom this comments.)
One has to look at the reasoning why civilian deaths are okay in our actions, but deaths of official U.S. personal by Soleimani are not okay, and that goes beyond whose side you are on.
Jumping to another historic loss of life as an example, dropping the atomic bomb killed tens of thousands of civilians but probably saved one million lives including our soldiers, Japanese soldiers, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians.
Clearly the bomb was a good choice, overall, for numbers of people killed. Not so much for those who died, however. But still, you really can’t argue with the numbers.
As another example, the U.S. has lost far more people, by the numbers, as American soldier casualties in our mid east wars than we lost in the initial attack on 911 that started this overseas campaign.
As a professional analyst, I’ve had to ask tough questions, such as how many lives might we have lost if we didn’t go over there, but just put in place the same security precautions in airports, borders, and all ports of entry. Did the lost American soldier lives save any lives here, or were our domestic lives saved almost exclusively by the security precautions?
I don’t have an answer for that, but it is a question worth asking. And one possible answer is that few additional lives were saved by our military operations, meaning that thousands and thousands of American deaths and far more wounded may have been a result of our own knee-jerk reaction to strike back, rather than choosing the best course of action for our people. And if that is the case, then we caused more American deaths than the 911 terrorists did without protecting ourselves any better.
But then you have to look at our standing in the world – would we be attacked more because we would have been seen weak if we hadn’t gone over to strike back? And would that perception of weakness have cause more American deaths? Tough questions with no clear answers. That’s why policy is such a murky area. But you have to ask the questions or you just thrash around blindly, reacting to everything without making progress toward clear cut goals.
So in point, let me say that there is no question that Soleimani was a bad man. He killed our people without remorse. On the other hand, we killed more of his “kind” by far, and also without remorse because we believe it was justified, though that is really hard to support with facts – especially since much of the animosity toward us if from long term policy in which we installed the Shah who horribly abused his people bolstered by our ongoing support. Who among us would sit back happily if another country had done that to us?
Now in closing, let me simply suggest that bandying about the numbers of how many of our own he killed or the counterpoint of how many of his we killed is a pointless line of reasoning. We might better spend our time contemplating the future course of relationship among our people, just as we now have a tremendously strong bond with the Japanese people and government, even though they killed far more Americans in WWII than all middle eastern terrorists and war soldiers combined, and even though we blew two whole Japanese civilian towns off the map.
And finally, and most important, let us consider the tearing up of the Iran treaty against great international support, the re-imposition of sanctions, and the killing of one of their most beloved leaders, and ask if that best advances the long-term goal of peace?
And let us do this before we thrash out again in retribution against those who attacked us because we assassinated a hero of theirs who in his career had a hand in the deaths of 600 Americans.
Here’s the link to one of many articles on civilian casualties caused by American actions in the middle east. And a note. We were told multiple times by the intelligence agency personnel working on our projects to never use U.S. news sources in gathering data because they are too biased. They suggested to use only the Christian Science Monitor in this country, as it is always based on fact and non-biased reporting, and overseas to use the BBC and Al Jazeera, both of which tell it more like it is than any other U.S. news sources. Shocked me, but in gather data for our reports, I quickly discovered they were right.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/06/us-syria-iraq-isis-islamic-state-strikes-death-toll