The other side of the story

The killing of General Soleimani upset me terribly. I don’t believe it’s ever good policy for the U.S. to assassinate people. Can you imagine what would have happened if they did that to one of us? Despite the rhetoric in defense of this action taken by the Trump administration, this man was not poised to attack us, nor was he plotting an attack. And the lies that are being spread in the name of defending ourselves against the indefensible have even gone so far as to link him to the 9/11 attack — this by our vice-president, Mr. Pence. This is a most egregious untruth considering our fairly recent past and the build up to war with Iraq that was based entirely on lies.

When I first saw the pictures of Qasem Soleimani, I was reminded of my father, also a major general who served in WW2. The physical resemblance was strange and uncanny, the smile lines around Soleimani’s eyes reminding me that he was a human being being with human feelings, just as my father was. Both military men, both short in stature, and both charismatic leaders.

The defense of this action that has been spread across many articles, has painted Suleimani with a brush dipped in tar, describing him as a bad, bad man and going through every bad thing he ever did. But when I looked into his background I found a different story lurking there. He was “attentive to forces killed in combat and their families.” He treated his troops well and tried to keep them out of harm’s way. He worked to combat drug trafficking along the Afghanistan border. He supported his country in the…