Trump’s actions violate every norm of international behavior.- echo opinion

Iraq-Iran Morass
Echo opinion letter published in the Lexington Herald Leader, a Kentucky newspaper:

Funeral for Qassem Soleimani following the Donald Trump assassination of the Iranian General.

The past two or three weeks have shown the United States to be a rogue player in the Persian Gulf. Donald Trump has boastfully admitted that he ordered our military to kill Iran’s leading General Qassem Soleimani, who himself had led the fight against Iraq — and bragged about it publicly. Trump’s actions, however, violate every norm of international behavior.

This has led the Iraqi government to potentially insist that U.S. troops leave Iraq — though it is not yet clear if or when that will happen. Our allies are puzzled and quietly furious. Our Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has made a fool of himself and confused our allies. Defense Secretary Mark Esper has contradicted what the defense department memos have said. Any strategies of this administration for its aggressive approach have certainly not been evident before the attack or now afterwards.

The Iraqis have asked our country to make plans to remove our military from Iraq, which would open that country to the full subversive efforts of the many Iranian proxy groups within Iraq itself. The results would be disastrous for the free world as well as for the United States. A miracle aside, there appears little the United States can do. The forthcoming Trump impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate, therefore, is fraught with danger and is vitally important in getting the Trump hand away from the tiller of the American ship of state before it finds itself being battered out of recognition by the rocks of history and carelessness. Our children and grandchildren do not deserve this.

John D. Stempel, Lexington, former political counselor in the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and director of UK’s Patterson School of Diplomacy, 1993-2004