Yesterday marked the first anniversary of America’s killing of Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Islamic Republic’s expeditionary Quds Force, who for many years directed the network of militias and terrorist groups that have wreaked havoc and destruction throughout the Middle East. Two weeks ago, Iran-backed forces fired a barrage of rockets that landed near the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and Israel and the U.S. have placed their forces on high alert in anticipation of a more dramatic attempt by Tehran to exact revenge. Recalling her own stunned response to the news of Suleimani’s death, and that of her fellow Iraqis, Rasha Al Aqeedi writes:
[T]hose with no personal experience living at the mercy of tyranny struggle to comprehend the perception of invincibility that some leaders create in the minds of those over whom they rule. The disbelief over the death of tyrants is unrelated to our personal feelings towards them. It isn’t a form of political Stockholm syndrome; it stems from a perception of almightiness built by those who dictate every aspect of our lives. Their actions decide the fate of millions and the outcome, however brutal, does not harm their authority.
Suleimani saved a collapsing Syrian regime, prolonging [that country’s civil] war, giving sectarian succor to Islamic State’s genocidal propaganda, and corralling the wretched of the earth, from Afghan children to Syria’s Alawite poor, into fighting on behalf of his expansionist project.
The ancient kings and pharaohs believed in, and lived by, their own immortality, which permitted them to rule by unmitigated savagery, free from even lip service to humane rules of war. Modern-day tyrannies count on three things. First, the inaction and indifference of an international community that has mastered the phrase “gravely concerned” and shown an unwillingness to do much else. Second, a rising Western consensus which holds that dictators must be coddled and appeased lest their downfall produce unintended consequences. Third, deception: the transformation of their own atrocities into heroic military victories.
Men like Soleimani have to be removed before the agony and destruction they’ve caused can ever be righted.
Read more on Newlines: https://newlinesmag.com/essays/the-vincible-general/