No matter how vile Soleimani was, his crimes cannot justify his murder, as The Intercept’s James Risen termed the targeted killing in a recent essay. Summary executions, even of the most heinous individuals, remain illegal. Worse, the drone strike on Soleimani could be the first of many such undertakings by Trump, signaling a new phase in drone warfare aimed not only at nonstate terrorists, but also at hostile foreign state officials. To date, Trump’s publicly announced justifications for Soleimani’s assassination have shifted wildly, in the fashion of dictators, lurching from one bogus rationale to another. It is unconvincing to justify Soleimani’s killing as an act of deterrence against future aggression, as both Attorney General William Barr and Secretary Pompeo claimed on Monday. Deterrence, as Professor Haque explains, “is not a legal defense. [It] is a confession.”
At www.laprogressive.com
