Let me make this pellucidly clear - there is no justification

[malaise]

for the illegal assassination of a member of any government - NONE!

Further the Con violated both US law and international law.
Stop putting plaster on a major crime. That is all.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. What if a foreign military force assassinated an American leader?

What if it was Trump himself? Even if we were pleased to have him gone because he sucks as a leader, I think we'd consider it to be an act of war on principle.

[malaise]

3. That is why we have international law

It's not we can do what we want and fuck everyone else.
Add war criminal to the list for this monster

[RKP5637]

7. Exactly!!! IMO it was an act of war. n/t

[malaise]

9. For which Congress gave no authority

Lock up this Monster before it's too late

[RKP5637]

11. This ass gets away with all kinds of shit and all the GOP senate does is sit on their asses

and smile. This MF'er is going to take this country right down to nothing. IMO the repercussions from his act of war will be a threat sadly to this nation for a long time, probably.

[lunatica]

17. Which is exactly Putin's plan

Putin is ruling over a country that’s a mere shadow of its former “glory”. All because it got involved in Afghanistan which started its slide into ruin.

Putin wants Russia’s former glory during the time it was USSR. He wants to be THE superpower nation, stronger than the Unites States, so he wants to destroy the US. How better than to control the US President?

[Hermit-The-Prog]

23. Republicans want the U.S. to be one of Putin's satellites

All Republicans in office are complicit. Maybe they hope to be rewarded.

[RKP5637]

36. And the GOP and tRump are willing to comply all they can. n/t

[pangaia]

21. "all the GOP senate does is sit on their asses"

That is the one thing I repeat ad infinitum.. It is REPUBLICAns

not trumpoer

[RKP5637]

35. ...

[Traildogbob]

14. Well......

Welcome as liberators, works for our excuse.. Bolten said it allowed, Regime Change. It is illegal. When do we stop telling other countries you need our leader approval, yet allow our elections to be stolen year after year? WE need a regime change, world if you are listening, if would benefit all of you. Out turn for help. NATO, if your listening........Hilter change could have been much easier if the world did not let it fester so long. Come on over, MAGA!!!

[James48]

28. I don't know, I'd have to think about that.

Russia, if you’re listening...

[John Fante]

56. I would consider it an act of war.

That's why I'd only offer to buy everyone at the bar one glass of champagne instead of two.

[walkingman]

2. You are 100% correct and it is time for EVERYONE to yell it from the roofs. I am sick and tired

of people pandering to this disgusting criminal we have in the WH. People that support this have no honor and are destroying this nation on a daily basis. Denying climate change, deregulating everything without regard to safety or environmental issues, purposefully denigrating anyone that doesn't agree with him, and using religion, of all things, to support his agenda.

[malaise]

4. I don't get it

[Arkansas Granny]

5. And to make matters even worse, it appears to many that the

main reason for this act was to deflect from his own problems and bad press. How many lives will be lost on all sides because of this foolhardy action?

[IADEMO2004]

6. pellucidly...Just short of 200,000 posts and you drop pellucidly. Well done.

[2naSalit]

15. I thought that was rather impressive too!

[lunatica]

22. She did this once before to my knowledge

Which is why I already knew the meaning of the word this time!

One’s education never stops!

Thanks Malaise!

[KentuckyWoman]

40. +1

[malthaussen]

8. Alas, Malaise, if Amerika does it, it's okay.

The 21st century has been rich in examples of the US flouting international law.

I can see the scene in the UN Security Council now: unanimous vote to censure the US for this act (except for Israel), and the US vetoes it. Used to be the USSR who pulled this crap.

-- Mal

[malaise]

10. 20th and 21st centuries

You nailed the UN vote

[2naSalit]

13. +1

[totodeinhere]

34. If they have the vote in the Security Council do you really believe that

Boris Johnson's ambassador would vote to censure the US? At best they might abstain, but that's about it.

[Pepsidog]

12. I agree, imagine the indignation of taking out our Defense Secretary in a car at the airport.

[lunatica]

27. Imagine if it was Colin Powell or Wesley Clark

We’d be so fucking furious that we would retaliate big time. It doesn’t matter if we have ambivalent feelings about them. The act, the very temerity of such an action would unite us all in anger.

[jalan48]

16. Trump's trying to bait Iran into committing a 9-11 type of attack here in the U.S. IMHO.

If that were to happen it would allow him to shut down all criticism and investigations of him, his administration and his family members while forcing politicians to get inline or risk being labeled anti-American.

[live love laugh]

46. 💯. And guess what? Even if they don't take the bait

the bait will be manufactured—already a few Walmart-worthy drones are national news.

[spanone]

18. K&R...⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Kaleva]

19. What international organization says this was a crime?

And so far, I've not heard any of our leaders in Congress saying it was.

[Amishman]

44. It wasn't, it was just terribly timed and handled

Read up on the dead, they were terrorists and the world is better off with them dead. That being said...

The problem is the timing and way this was handled. Rather than putting out a calm summary and explanation (backed by intelligence) as President Obama did when he took decisive action - we get incoherent saber rattling on Twitter. This complete mishandling of it from a leadership perspective is yet another concrete example how exactly how Trump is absolutely unfit for office.

[Kaleva]

45. I agree with you.

[cwydro]

20. How about if we could have taken Hitler out?

[Stuart G]

24. Over in "Editorials and Other Articles" is an example of "Retaliation for events like this)

hit this link...warning this is ugly and quite awful:

Trump is much too stupid to know this and the possible ramifications of his decision

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016245240

[malaise]

30. I posted about that slaughter

a few days ago. The US paid out lots of money for killing those 290 people

[IronLionZion]

25. K+R for pellucidly

And agree with your sentiments on extrajudicial executions without due process. They could have found a way to arrest him and stand trial for his crimes.

[sl8]

26. "Pellucidly Clear"--at the Supreme Court, the NY Court of Appeals, & Elsewhere ...

Sorry for the tangent, but the phrase caught my attention.

From http://www.newyorkcourtwatcher.com/2009/12/pellucidly-clear-at-supreme-court-ny.html

"Pellucidly Clear"--at the Supreme Court, the NY Court of Appeals, & Elsewhere (An Impressive & Fascinating Pedigree)

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, New York Chief Judge Judith Kaye, California Supreme Court Justice Stanley Mosk, Federal 2d Circuit Judge Henry Friendly. They used it. "Pellucidly clear," that is.

[As this blog's erudite regular readers undoubtedly know, the phrase in question literally means transparently clearly clear.]

In the last post, I used it. With self-amusement, and self-consciousness. I also recalled having seen it used twice before. Both times in high court decisions. Once by a Judge on New York's highest court while I was clerking there. The other time in a recent Supreme Court opinion.

Sure enough, I plugged "pellucidly clear" into the legal research engines and voila! It was Judge Bernard Meyer in his 1986 opinion for the New York Court of Appeals in People ex rel Robertson v. State Div. of Parole. And it was Justice Stevens in his concurring opinion last year in Baze v. Rees.

[...]

[malaise]

29. Very cool

I stole it from our Union man back in the day. I have used it here many times

From your link - I'm in good company

Stevens, Meyer, Mosk, Kaye, McCormick, Selya, Ellis, Murnaghan, Katzmann, Wood, and Friendly!!

That is some impressive judicial pedigree. And that's good enough reason to go ahead, use "pellucidly clear," and be proud!

[Stuart G]

31. K and R...for visibility..nt.

[fescuerescue]

32. Any President that assassinates military leaders should be impeached

This is no circumstance where this should go unpunished.

[malaise]

38. Suleimani killing the latest in a long, grim line of US assassination efforts

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/04/us-political-assassinations-history-iran-suleimani
<snip>
There has been no shortage of US attempts to remove foreign adversaries through highly dubious legal or ethical means

The US government is no stranger to the dark arts of political assassinations. Over the decades it has deployed elaborate techniques against its foes, from dispatching a chemist armed with lethal poison to try to take out Congo’s Patrice Lumumba in the 1960s to planting poison pills (equally unsuccessfully) in the Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s food.

But the killing of General Qassem Suleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite military Quds Force, was in in a class all its own. Its uniqueness lay not so much in its method – what difference does it make to the victim if they are eviscerated by aerial drone like Suleimani, or executed following a CIA-backed coup, as was Iraq’s ruler in 1963, Abdul Karim Kassem? – but in the brazenness of its execution and the apparently total disregard for either legal niceties or human consequences.

“The US simply isn’t in the practice of assassinating senior state officials out in the open like this,” said Charles Lister, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “While Suleimani was a brutal figure responsible for a great deal of suffering, and his Quds Force was designated by the US as a terrorist organization, there’s no escaping that he was arguably the second most powerful man in Iran behind the supreme leader.”

Donald Trump’s gloating tweets over the killing combined with a sparse effort to justify the action in either domestic or international law has led to the US being accused of the very crimes it normally pins on its enemies. Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, denounced the assassination as an “act of international terrorism”.

Vipin Narang, a political scientist at MIT, said the killing “wasn’t deterrence, it was decapitation”.

[totodeinhere]

51. This brings up an interesting point. If he hadn't already been impeached would he have dared to do

this? I think we might be able to make a case that since he has already been impeached he now feels like he has nothing to lose. And we have already seen that impeaching him will not remove him from office barring some kind of zombie apocalypse.

[totodeinhere]

33. Just wondering. Would you have said the same thing if FDR had assassinated Adolf Hitler?

To be clear, I am not implying that Qassem Soleimani was the equivalent to Hitler. But I'm just wondering if there were any circumstances where you might make an exception to that rule.

[malaise]

37. He didn't

We have laws national and international for a reason. No country has the right to be judge, jury and executioner no matter how many weapons they control.

[totodeinhere]

52. Well I'm glad that at least you have this all figured out.

Myself, I am still struggling with the morals of such an action in an extreme situation.

[Bradical79]

39. I'd say it's fine in a formal war like that

But I'm not sure what international law says about such a thing these days. At the time, it probably would have met with outrage in a similiar situation where FDR had Hitler pre-emptively and openly assasinated with no congressional aproval before we had thrown our hat into WWII. I could see FDR impeached and removed if such a thing happened.

[totodeinhere]

49. I think it's a tough issue and I have grappled with this in my mind many times.

Yes, I agree that adherence to international law is important And if Hitler had been assassinated say in 1941 we don't know what would have happened. Perhaps his successor would have been even worse if that's even possible. Or perhaps six million Jews would not have been murdered.

But in this particular case, this administration has lied to us so often that there can be absolutely no credibility to their claim that this illegal assassination will save lives. But sadly I suspect that at least in the short term Trump's poll numbers will go up. Such is the sorry state of our country right now.

[uponit7771]

55. +1, we didn't even want tit for tats during formal wars !! Cause upper level killing wouldn't stop

[Ferrets are Cool]

41. Thank you so much Malaise!!!!!

[Karadeniz]

42. I read that part of the agreement for the US to be in Iraq is that we won't conduct aggressive

Tactics inside Iraq...that was before Trump declared the Iraqi men we killed as terrorists. I bet we weren't supposed to kill Iraqis, either.

[malaise]

43. Iraq is supposed to be a sovereign nation

If the Con has no problem violating the US Constitution, why would he and his goons care about international law.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

47. Exactly, my dear malaise. Exactly.

[philly_bob]

48. Add this to the Articles of Impeachment, there's still time... /nt

[oasis]

50. The impeachment squeeze has turned Trump into a diabolical maniac. nt

[Hoyt]

53. Think OP is more likely true than not, and well said. But, as long as we try

to influence the Middle East with troops and stuff, this is going to happen.

We need to get out or significantly reduce our presence. Otherwise, it’s hard to say what is right or wrong, illegal, a crime, a friggin ignorant move, the end, or what.

[uponit7771]

54. THIS !!! My understanding is the Iranian they killed was a cabinet level person

[onetexan]

57. Might i modify that to: PELOSIDLY CLEAR

As Madame Speaker said, what the Idiot is doing was not discussed with & authorized by Congress and therefore illegal.

[malaise]

58. Love it

and never forget that she voted against the Iraq invasion and occupation