Bleeding Edge

Thinking and voicing the open ended Question of why is it that after more than 40 years of Iran’s poisonous activities, sponsoring terror worldwide, and unlawful development of nuclear weapons, alongside with their spreading of Hezbollah style flat-footed Islamic fundamentalist Shia militancy throughout the region, and throughout the wider world — the United States of America’s policy for the region, has been one of steady decline of security & safety architecture for the Middle East?

That question is somewhat closer to be answered now that things came to a boil in Bagdad, Iraq with the successful and bloodless droning of the chief architect of the Syrian genocidal war, and the man who has consistently propped up the failed tyrannical regime of Syria that has costed humanity upwards of a million dead civilians, mostly children and women.

The target of the successfully targeted drones was Quasem Soleimani – a chief terrorist and a stain on humanity, that has now been bleached from the face of this earth.

Indeed the latest answer to this pivotal  came with a “whooooshhhh…” sound that cleared this one persistent stain, from the fabric of humanity — and that is a giant understatement…

Because for far too long, upwards of forty long years now, Quasem Soleimani and the Iranian militant Islamists, along with their proxies and their agents, have been killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians, children, mothers and the infirm, all of them ordinary people like you and me — with impunity, both domestically within their country, and in the wider Middle East, as well as internationally throughout the world.

Surprisingly, America has pretty much been a silent bystander, in that special Middle Eastern theater of the absurd, and thus allowed that naked terror shit-show to go on, by making deals and giving cash to the crazy Ayatollahs.

And what did we get in return?

We got a terror show.

A terror show, that would make horror films made in Hollywood by my friend Tarantino, look like Disney’s animated children stories with lame ducks and feathered friends…

Yet suddenly, and especially after the election of President Trump, and with the strong encouragement of Mr Bolton and my countryman, the marine general from Washington state James Mattis — the United States attempted to stop the merry-go-round by disentangling our policies from Obama’s idea of paying Iran a Pirate’s Ransom of Billions in cash for a “deal” and instead we stopped drinking Cool-Aid out of that “poisoned well” and we scuppered the Iran deal, and reimposed severe sanctions on Iran for their nuclear weapons developments and for their terrorism sponsorship.

But the new US administration had intentionally left a few back doors open, as we had also left some waivers in place, in order to offer an inducement, and a quiet signal, about wanting to re-negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran.

Additionally further approaches were made from our side, in a stream of constant “asks” for third party intervention, and invitations for meetings, that went back and forth, as well as assurances given for an imminent round of negotiations, and even inducements offered for the Iranians to sit alongside us, and start the “Horse Trading” games of one-up-manship anywhere they pleased…

These overtures to the “Islamic Terror Tyrants” that I call ITT, were often times offered by the refusniks of the last administration, like John Kerry and some other hold-outs of the long gone past, who they thought that they will be back in power soon, and thus they always spoke with the Mullahs, of making a “cash-deal” for when the Dems would come back to power in America, and that Iran should “cut them some slack” during their first days back in power.

Pipe dreams. And their wishes are pipe dreams too.

All of them pipe dreams, coming out from the mouth of that medical Mary-Jane that they are all smoking to their heart’s content… or from the same “Habili-Bibili” hashish infused “nargile” the Ayatollahs are smoking too.

Because however long that day might be from today — the errant refuzniks who now are trying to help Iran, didn’t flinch while giving Iran billions of dollars and additional reasons to stay in the game long enough, until they come back to power…

Yet, after the sea change in American security policy for the MENA region — apparently the Ayatollahs missed the Memo, and thus neither the Supreme leader of Iran the Theocratic tyrant Khamenei, nor the arch-terrorist mastermind Soleimani were sufficiently alerted to the changes made, and thus the US’s lenient treatment of Iran at the hands of the so-called hawks of the present US administration did not penetrate deep enough in their tiny souls, and in their small minds, to alert them to the fact that they had to change their criminal terrorist ways…

So they went ahead and ordered their minions to make the state of Iraq also part of their theocratic regime — come hell or high water, resting firmly in the past, and believing their erroneous assumption, that the US will continue to stand down, and silently observe their misdeeds, while making no move to stop or deter them…

And thus it came to pass, that the Iranian stooges were emboldened and attacked and stormed the US embassy in Bagdad, having been allowed to penetrate deep inside the Green Zone by the Iraqi security forces under the proviso that they will only attack the American embassy, and thereby hoping that they will cause another “Benghazi Terror Incident” looking for blood by killing the American diplomats who were barricaded inside the US embassy’s main building that was defended by a few Marines.

Yet quite unexpectedly for the attackers, our Marine guards were fortified with reinforcements, and thus repelled the riotous attackers who had managed earlier to penetrate the first perimeter zone, and had set fire on the embassy’s entrance reception hall, and on some other outbuildings of the Embassy compound.

Naturally, the Marines counterattacked with non lethal force and dispersed the crowd of Hezbollah and other Iran supported militia men that had gathered on the embassy’s front buildings they had already burned, as they were attempting to storm the main building itself, in order to kill our Diplomatic personnel housed within the walls of the main embassy building…

This deliverance was quite unexpected by the attackers who were vast in numbers and unsurprisingly well equipped.

Further unexpected events followed…

Unexpected events that the masterminds of the terror attacks in Bagdad clearly were not prepared for…

Apparently in the timeline of unintended consequences for the Iranian tyrannical regime — after repelling the dastardly attacks against the US embassy in Bagdad and after evacuating the American diplomatic personnel from Bagdad — the US sent some drones who rained down a measure of “whoop-ass” on Soleimani, and his co-conspirators as they were leaving Bagdad, after their plan of terror was foiled — and thus the US came out of this skirmish resurgent and brimming with strength, having clearly demonstrated to all and sundry, that our current President, and the United States military, are willing and able to effectively strike back at Iran, and at their terror masters, after striking them hard, exactly where it hurts.

Sending the message to the insane terrorists that by droning and killing the mastermind terrorist Soleimani and his cohorts, the United States is doing what is necessary by removing that human stain, and is simply taking care of business — then that is what the Memo to the Mullahs, to the Ayatollahs and to all other terrorists, says.

And further the US says that no more “Benghazi Tragedies” will be allowed, because that is what happens to the perpetrators of terror. And seeing as Soleimani, was personally responsible for organizing, overseeing and orchestrating this reign of terror in Iraq’s capital Bagdad, as he had done to so many other cities, towns and villages throughout the region, and he was gleefully admiring his handiwork by being present on the “ground” directing his minions that were recently attacking and burning down the American embassy of Bagdad — he seems to be asking to be droned and evaporated.

Thankfully, Soleimani’s labors were largely unsuccessful, because his attack on the American embassy of Baghdad did not become another tragedy for America like that of our embassy in “Benghazi” in 2012, and instead it turned in our favor, because he made himself visible as a viable drone target in “foreign territory” deep inside the American battle theater of Iraq, and well outside the sheltering skies of his home country of Iran.

So in my mind — this droning of a Chief Terrorist in the filed of his terror — is clearly justified, because that is exactly what St Augustine had in mind when he termed certain types of conflict as “Just War.”

And as it comes at the heels of the Bagdad terror wave that Soleimani was personally responsible for — his “droning” was fully justified, because he brought this sentence of death to himself.

As a matter of fact Soleimani owned, his own “Sentence to Death” as expressed by St Augustine’s axiom that “Punishment is Justice for the Unjust.”

And in some form this was his deliverance too. And a form of closure for the many thousands of his victims that still today mourn their loved ones, lost in this awfulness of constant terror in their homelands…

So aside from the meting-out of justice, and from the realization of the “Just Punishment” for terrorists, what comes next?

What’s next is anybody’s guess…

Maybe war, maybe battles, maybe regional conflagrations, and maybe nothing at all.

Surely some more dronings will follow as the plan seems to be working well. Spot terrorist in an operating theater of battle — drone said terrorist, and eliminate the stain of humanity once and for all.

Rinse.

Repeat….

Ad infinitum.

That is all that is going to happen.

And therefore, on the part of Iran — I am most likely to believe that nothing at all is going to happen, because that is the preferred “modus operandi” of the Ayatollahs, who like all reptilian beings are right now scurrying to hide under the nearest rock, in order to find some cover, lest they be “droned” in their sleep.

And my further assessment is that they will remain quiet until things die-down.

Because the Ayatollahs and the Mullahs all know, that any other provocation, including possible Iranian strikes against Israel or against Saudi Arabia, or even Iranian strikes against US troops stationed in Iraq, even unleashing even more terror in their own sphere of influence, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey etc —  the now famously trolled Ayatollahs of Iran, have been defanged and are all presently scurrying, for their caves in pell mell fashion, leaving their flip flops, their turbans, along with their beads, far behind.

As a matter of fact a wave of vast anti-theocracy and anti-tyranny unrest both inside Iran & Iraq, coupled with anti-Ayatollah and anti-Mullah regime demonstrations and civil disobedience within Iran itself, has been unleashed and that is the best tool for the US and our Allies, to be utilized in order to further disable this State Sponsor of Terrorism and replace the Mullahs and the Ayatollahs for good, giving a breath of fresh air for all Persian peoples.

We must do this, because keeping up the pressure on the foolish Ayatollahs makes one thing abundantly clear, and places the devilish Mullah’s calculating minds at a new equilibrium, by removing any doubt about the New American Middle Eastern policy, fully alerting the fundamentalist leadership of Iran, that they can no longer continue to spread terror across the World, or to expect that killing American citizens and striking at US embassies will be met with any degree of impunity.

There is a new sheriff in town and they best behave themselves.

And that visible shift in the US security policy for the Middle East, represents a New Dawn for the whole of the MENA region, as well as for the rest of the World and for Iran in particular.

All, because finally, some people in these United States woke up, and realized that after spending upwards of a Trillion dollars and sacrificing more than five thousand American lives in this errant conflict of the Iraqi oil wars against Saddam Hussein — we now have turned the page and realized that we can no longer supplant one crazy dictator for a bunch of loony fundamentalist Islamist dictators, who want to usher hastily the end of the world, because they believe in teleological Islam.

The end of times will come for their silly heads, one at a time, as deservedly required payback for their actions of terror — justly.

Justly, as the Pentagon has now confirmed that at the direction of President Donald Trump, the United States military unleashed a drone attack inside Iraq and rather near Baghdad airport — that struck a convoy of automobiles carrying the famed Iranian terrorist, so called “Major General” Qassem Soleimani, the notorious terrorist commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ “Quds force,” and his Iraqi lieutenant, who is known by his nom de guerre Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, annihilating both men along with their drivers and personal security detail…

This US drone strike took place in the theater of war territory, deep inside Iraq, inside Baghdad, and very near the major civilian airport of this much suffering country, that cannot bear up any more terror, having lost more than a million people in the recent war conflicts and the very many years of terror and tyrannical regimes.

Now it’s time for the Iraqi people to receive the dividends of Peace and Prosperity that their wealthy country can afford to give to all of their citizens. Now it is the time to engage in Democracy and civilian institutions building. Now is the time to rebuilt their infrastructure. Now is the time to fix up their schools and educational systems and stop the genocide of their minorities. Now is the time for Iraq to finally unfetter themselves form the terrible effects of tribalism, and receive the benefits of progress and civilization that it’s people are thirsting for…

The prayers of the Iraqi people have now been answered as they see the nasty virus of terror, slowly being exterminated; one terrorist at a time, thus giving the space for the germination of the green shoots of Liberty and Democracy, as it happened in our own country after 1776… when our own people prayed for deliverance.

May the tree of Liberty and Democracy take hold in Iraq, now that the American military command, with one swoop has decapitated the Iranian regime’s chief architect of terror, along with Iran’s most prominent leader in Iraq — where the US Embassy was set ablaze and our diplomat’s lives were hanging in that awful balance of terror, but. a few days ago…

We do not want to see another Benghazi, where our Ambassador that was working hard to improve the lives of the Libyan people, was tragically tortured and unceremoniously killed, back on September 11th of 2012, when members of another Iranian inspired terrorist cell named “Ansar al-Sharia” attacked the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi Libya, killing the much loved American Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and the US Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith…

That is the playbook of the now removed stain on humanity, who lived under the name Soleimani, and his “removal from the field” is a military success far superior to the removal of Osama bin Laden and, more recently, of the ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

And I am saying that because these “stain removals” pale by comparison, because Mr Soleimani, in addition to being responsible for killing hundreds of US soldiers during the Iraq War — had directed the largest ever state project of officially sanctioned “State Terrorism” which has shaped the geopolitics of the MENA region and beyond.

And since Soleimani, who arguably was the second most important man in the Iranian power hierarchy, and had led Iran’s military campaigns throughout the Middle East — his removal is a coup of unprecedented proportions for the current conflict with Iran.

So maybe this time around, the lesson will not get lost as Iran’s campaigns, that resulted in the lengthening of Iran’s shadow across Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon — campaigns that Mr Soleimani had directed, along with all of the armies, militias, and terrorist groups that have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, devastated civilian infrastructures, and turned millions of people into refugees, will be redirected towards erasing his negative influence and thus remaking Iran a beneficial force in their own neighborhood…

One can wish for that, and am certain that if the Iranian people  had their way — they would deliver on this, as they have done throughout the ages of their brilliant history. Because who can forget Epic of Gilgamesh? Or the value of Cyrus the Great to the whole world? Or the many civilizing influences of the great empire of Persia over the ages? And who can dispute their amazing contributions to humanity in times past?

So Soleimani’s droning was long overdue, in order to replace him with a benevolent force for good and for the benefit of the people, and not for terror. Enough said.

He had to go, because Soleimani’s main job was commanding a network of Shiite militias subordinate to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which have served as the foot soldiers for his military campaigns. His subcommander in Iraq was al-Muhandis, an old Iranian asset who headed the Hezbollah Brigades and oversaw the so-called Popular Mobilization Units, the umbrella structure under which Iranian-controlled Iraqi militias were grouped. Over much of the previous decade, many of these militias were deployed in Syria, alongside the IRGC’s Lebanese unit, Hezbollah, to defend Iran’s interests there in support of the genocidal regime of the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

Soleimani’s militias, which were formally integrated into the Iraqi security apparatus, have long been the real power in Baghdad.

But they have also taken ample advantage of US support — especially during the Obama administration years, as part of the anti-ISIS campaign, to take control of large sections of the Iraqi border with Syria, which allowed Soleimani to move missiles, personnel, and other materiel across the border and point them at Israel’s head. Recent Israeli strikes along the Iraqi-Syrian border and inside Iraq are testament to Iran’s use of Iraqi territory in its broader geopolitical play, which includes the positioning of missiles on Iraqi and Syrian soil, after having turned Lebanon into a forward missile base against Israel, Turkey and even Europe.

And lest we be misled and mistaken by the Iranian regime’s propaganda that activates the useful idiots in the West — we ought to remember that Israel is hardly the only terrorism target, since amongst many others — Soleimani used Iraq as a forward base to target other US allies, like Saudi Arabia, and all of the Emirates, as well as people from all other nations as when he indiscriminately killed the United nations personnel in Bagdad, with his “truck bombing” of the United Nations building inside the Green Zone of Bagdad, when my friend the Commissioner for Refugees Sérgio Vieira de Mello, also perished in that dastardly act of naked & hateful terror unleashed against the very people who were trying to give succor and help to the much maligned millions of refugees and IDPs, all fleeing from the carnage after being displaced by the Iraqi wars of succession, and bloody civil war and insurrections.

The “Canal Hotel Terrorist Bombing” in Baghdad, Iraq, took place on the afternoon of August 19th, of 2003, and it killed at least 22 people, including the United Nations’ Special Representative in Iraq Sérgio Vieira de Mello, and wounded over 100, including prominent human rights lawyer and political activist Amin Mekki Medani.

That was the handiwork of Soleimani, and it had his fingertips all over it, as that is the hallmark and the kind of inhuman and decidedly evil strategic threat, that Soleimani personified against the whole World.

He was such a singular threat because only a state sponsor of terrorism, with large resources could pose such danger, since terror group leaders like bin Laden, and al-Baghdadi, could only dream of doing what Soleimani did, while hiding in their respective subterranean caves.

And yet, despite the size of the threat Soleimani posed — two successive US presidents steered away from removing him, from the playing field.

Because even when Soleimani and his minions, were killing and maiming American soldiers and scores of innocent civilians in Iraq with children wearing suicide belts and women dressed in suicide explosive vests, along with young men equipped with antitank missiles and night time placing of roadside IEDs with a great regularity — President George W. Bush, and his military commanders, were too afraid to pull the trigger and remove this stain on humanity from the scene…

Indeed, General Stanley McChrystal revealed to us, about a year ago — how, when he was serving as the head of the Joint Special Operations Command in 2007, he had ample opportunity to kill Soleimani, and very good reason to do so: “At the time, Iranian-made roadside bombs built and deployed at his command were claiming the lives of US troops across Iraq.”

But he did not remove him, in order “to avoid a further firefight, and the contentious politics that would follow.”

A year later, another opportunity to kill Soleimani was wasted. During the operation to assassinate Hezbollah’s senior military commander, Imad Mughniyeh, in Damascus in 2008, Soleimani was present with Mughniyeh. “At one point, the two men were standing there, same place, same street. All they had to do was push the button,” a former US official disclosed in 2015. “But the operatives didn’t have the legal authority to kill Soleimani, because there had been no presidential authority to do so.”

Therefore, seemingly immune from US retaliation, Soleimani spent the Obama years strutting around Iraq and Syria like a peacock in ’70s-style turtleneck sweaters and an array of tailored military style jackets like an IRGC version of Al Pacino in Scarface, while garnering admiring magazine profiles.

This nauseating treatment started at the top.

Under President Obama, the US was realigning with Iran, which meant providing its regime with billions of dollars, some of it hand delivered by US officials in the form of large pallets of cash. The US also provided direct military support to Soleimani’s Iraqi militias as part of the anti-ISIS campaign. It was important not to cross Iran’s red lines, administration officials regularly leaked at the time, so as not to jeopardize the safety of U.S. soldiers while they killed Iran’s enemies in Iraq and Syria–a strategy that was variously labeled as “counterterrorism” or “the fight against Al Qaeda” or “the war against ISIS,” and which invariably involved aligning with Iran to kill Sunni Arabs, who form the majority of the region’s population.

Taking the red carpet treatment for granted, Iran appears to have badly miscalculated their chances this time around, with the United States under the leadership of President Trump, and there is obviously a lesson in the offing for those Islamists who just might be smart enough, and who might  want to learn, in order to adapt and consequently survive…

Because as it turns out, it is the US administration has now made made the lesson crystal clear, and delivered the relevant memo not just through the internet but directly through the mouth of the drones — and the lesson says that the United States of America would hold Iran, its leadership, and the Ayatollahs directly responsible and accountable, for any attack by Iran’s terrorist assets that would harm American military personnel, US diplomats, or the international peace and stability.

Now I hope that may the Ayatollahs find a good psychoanalyst and spent some time on the couch in order to analyze the significance of this message now.

I wish you all Good Luck with that, and please do let me know how it is working for you…

Yours,
Dr Churchill

PS:

The president personally tweeted that “Iran will be held fully responsible for lives lost, or damage incurred, at any of our facilities. They will pay a very BIG PRICE! This is not a Warning, it is a Threat. Happy New Year!”

Not only did Iran and its militias kill an American in one such attack, but they then orchestrated an attack on the US Embassy designed for maximum public humiliation. Soleimani, Al-Muhandis, and other senior Iranian militants in Iraq, took part in the attack, and even tagging and graffiti on the embassy walls, declared Soleimani to be the attackers’ commander.

As a matter of fact, there were no pretenses as to who was responsible for the attack. Iran’s head of state, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is often pictured with Soleimani at his side, publicly mocked the US, declaring that “You can’t do anything.” The stage was set for a replay of the Iranian US Embassy takeover of 1979 in Tehran.

Apparently, Supreme Leader Khamenei — according to Iranian theocratic extreme Islamist Shia fundamentalist regime’s hogwash ideas — exercises the authority of the missing 12th Shiite imam on earth, and yet he didn’t quite foresee, nor prophesied, and certainly not even imagined — what was coming next…

Because what came next, was followed by “the silence of the drones” aptly named because the “target” only hears a simple “Hisssss…”

The famous “Silence of the Drones” is the last thing Soleimani heard too.

The last minute “hisss…” that can easily be mistaken for flatulence and it is quite funny that this is what he heard, and certainly looked around for the responsible party inside an automobile full of garlic kabob eating fartists; so by the time they looked up — they were all evaporated.

Poof. It must have been the garlic that made them go pfttt….

But all jokes aside — maybe this time the lesson will not get lost on Iran’s Supreme leaders, or on their Yes-men, their lieutenants, and their followers…

At least one can hope.

PPS:

Happy New Year folks…