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January 7, 2020

Bernie compares Soleimani to a Russian dissident

By Andrea Widburg

One of the things that became obvious about the Left beginning with 9/11 is that leftists consider anyone who hates America to be virtuous in some way.  It's irrelevant to them that some America-haters are, within their own countries, people who are legitimately fighting for freedom, while others are actively seeking to impose totalitarianism wherever they can.  To a leftist, America-hating is the beginning and the end.  Actors' ideologies and motives are irrelevant.

This worldview is how leftists can come out with statements that are morally blind.  Many of us remember that Michael Moore compared the 9/11 killers, who dreamed of a world subordinate to sharia's brutalities, to America's Minutemen, who dreamed of a world of small government, individual liberty, and religious freedom. 

We also see this moral blindness in Bernie Sanders, one of the Democrat frontrunners.  In an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN about Trump's decision to terminate Soleimani, Bernie Sanders likened Soleimani, with the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hand, to a dissident in a totalitarian country fighting against his own repressive government:

[B]ut this guy is, you know, was as bad as he was, an official of the Iranian government. And you unleash ... then, if China does that, you know, if Russia does that. You know, Russia has been implicated under Putin with assassinating dissidents. So, once you're in the business of assassination, you unleash some very, very terrible forces[.]

There is so much wrong with what Bernie is saying.  To start, even Jeh Johnson, Obama's Homeland Security secretary, on Sunday's Meet the Press, agreed that this was not an assassination.  Instead, President Trump, he said, had the absolute right to take out a legitimate military target who was not on his home soil:

CHUCK TODD: Jeh, before you were Homeland Security Secretary, you were counselor at the Defense Department.

JEH JOHNSON: Correct.

CHUCK TODD: So explain for viewers, why does Mike Pompeo keep saying terrorist? There is a legal reason he keeps saying the word terrorist, isn’t there?

JEH JOHNSON: No, not necessarily. If you believe everything that our government is saying about General Soleimani, he was a lawful military objective, and the president, under his constitutional authority as commander in chief, had ample domestic legal authority to take him out without an additional congressional authorization. Whether he was a terrorist or a general in a military force that was engaged in armed attacks against our people, he was a lawful military objective.

Not only is Bernie wrong legally, but he's wrong morally and ideologically.  The Soviet dissidents were, and the Russian dissidents are, people who fight back against their own repressive government.  These despotic governments, in turn, do everything they can to silence these voices, whether marginalizing, arresting, imprisoning, torturing, or executing them.  Bernie, incidentally, never had a problem with the Soviet Union's treatment of its dissidents.

As to the United States, Soleimani was not a dissident.  He was an open combatant in Iran's explicitly declared war against America.  He was also a shadow combatant in the myriad proxy wars he fomented across the Middle East to kill all he deemed to be Iran's enemies, whether citizens or soldiers, Americans or not, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and any other country in which he worked.  Significantly, too, when Soleimani was killed, he was not in Iran; he had illegally entered Iraq, making himself a legitimate target on that basis.

The only dissidents involved in this whole drama are the thousands of people in Iran chafing under a brutal regime and routinely imprisoned, tortured, and killed by the mullahs' guards — of whom Soleimani was one.  Bernie's never shown much interest in those people.

One of the things that became obvious about the Left beginning with 9/11 is that leftists consider anyone who hates America to be virtuous in some way.  It's irrelevant to them that some America-haters are, within their own countries, people who are legitimately fighting for freedom, while others are actively seeking to impose totalitarianism wherever they can.  To a leftist, America-hating is the beginning and the end.  Actors' ideologies and motives are irrelevant.

This worldview is how leftists can come out with statements that are morally blind.  Many of us remember that Michael Moore compared the 9/11 killers, who dreamed of a world subordinate to sharia's brutalities, to America's Minutemen, who dreamed of a world of small government, individual liberty, and religious freedom. 

We also see this moral blindness in Bernie Sanders, one of the Democrat frontrunners.  In an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN about Trump's decision to terminate Soleimani, Bernie Sanders likened Soleimani, with the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hand, to a dissident in a totalitarian country fighting against his own repressive government:

[B]ut this guy is, you know, was as bad as he was, an official of the Iranian government. And you unleash ... then, if China does that, you know, if Russia does that. You know, Russia has been implicated under Putin with assassinating dissidents. So, once you're in the business of assassination, you unleash some very, very terrible forces[.]

There is so much wrong with what Bernie is saying.  To start, even Jeh Johnson, Obama's Homeland Security secretary, on Sunday's Meet the Press, agreed that this was not an assassination.  Instead, President Trump, he said, had the absolute right to take out a legitimate military target who was not on his home soil:

CHUCK TODD: Jeh, before you were Homeland Security Secretary, you were counselor at the Defense Department.

JEH JOHNSON: Correct.

CHUCK TODD: So explain for viewers, why does Mike Pompeo keep saying terrorist? There is a legal reason he keeps saying the word terrorist, isn’t there?

JEH JOHNSON: No, not necessarily. If you believe everything that our government is saying about General Soleimani, he was a lawful military objective, and the president, under his constitutional authority as commander in chief, had ample domestic legal authority to take him out without an additional congressional authorization. Whether he was a terrorist or a general in a military force that was engaged in armed attacks against our people, he was a lawful military objective.

Not only is Bernie wrong legally, but he's wrong morally and ideologically.  The Soviet dissidents were, and the Russian dissidents are, people who fight back against their own repressive government.  These despotic governments, in turn, do everything they can to silence these voices, whether marginalizing, arresting, imprisoning, torturing, or executing them.  Bernie, incidentally, never had a problem with the Soviet Union's treatment of its dissidents.

As to the United States, Soleimani was not a dissident.  He was an open combatant in Iran's explicitly declared war against America.  He was also a shadow combatant in the myriad proxy wars he fomented across the Middle East to kill all he deemed to be Iran's enemies, whether citizens or soldiers, Americans or not, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and any other country in which he worked.  Significantly, too, when Soleimani was killed, he was not in Iran; he had illegally entered Iraq, making himself a legitimate target on that basis.

The only dissidents involved in this whole drama are the thousands of people in Iran chafing under a brutal regime and routinely imprisoned, tortured, and killed by the mullahs' guards — of whom Soleimani was one.  Bernie's never shown much interest in those people.