Another Pointless Assassination in Baghdad

It’s January in an election year, so it must be time for the U.S. to assassinate someone in Baghdad:

A U.S. Special Operations drone strike in Baghdad on Thursday killed a senior figure in an Iran-linked militant group that is part of Iraq’s security apparatus, drawing sharp criticism from the Iraqi government, as well as allied groups.

It is absurd that the U.S. is still engaged in hostilities in Iraq almost 33 years after the end of Desert Storm. There are few better examples of the stupidity and futility of our government’s Middle Eastern policies than the tit-for-tat strikes between U.S. forces and Iraqi militias that answer to a government that our military is supposedly there to support. The U.S. is routinely committing acts of war against the security forces of a government that is considered a partner of the United States, and it does so over the vehement objections of the government that is compelled to host our troops. As if this weren’t already bad enough, this also makes conflict with Iran more likely.

Every time that the U.S. bombs a target in Iraq or Syria, some government official claims that it is being done to “restore deterrence.” It never works. It hasn’t worked for years for the simple reason that U.S. forces should not be in these countries and local forces are never going to accept their presence. Our troops don’t belong in these countries, they have no proper authorization to be there in any case, and they aren’t welcome there. One president after another can order all the assassinations by drone that he likes, but it won’t change that reality.

Four years ago this week, U.S. forces killed Qassem Soleimani and a leading member of an Iraqi Shia militia in a drone strike at the airport in Baghdad. The Trump administration initially claimed that this was done to thwart an imminent attack on U.S. troops. That was an obvious lie, as anyone could see at the time. Then the administration fell back on the story that killing Soleimani would “restore deterrence” and halt further attacks on bases where U.S. troops were located.

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia

Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.