This piece in the Columbia Journalism Review calls out writers and commenters for their use of the term "blood on his hands" when referring to General Suleimani, which I noticed was being used almost as much as "off-ramp" in the last few days.
He notes that Sulaimani, like any military officer from any country, would have "blood on his hands" and explains that this particular charge stems from the fact that during the Iraq insurgency, which was largely a religious, sectarian conflict, he was responsible for flooding the country with a weapon, the IED, which killed and maimed many people on behalf of the minority Shia militia. He was himself wounded by an IED as a journalist in Iraq.
Anyway, his point is this:
The invasion of Iraq is now widely seen as a disaster, resulting in hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. But few in the US political and media mainstream would describe former President George W. Bush, who started that war, or the American generals who waged it, as having “blood on their hands.” Nor would it be said of successive American administrations that have collaborated on covert operations in Iraq with the Mojahedin-e Khalq, a cult-like anti-Islamic Republic terror organization in Iran responsible for hundreds of civilian deaths. Nor would it be said of George H.W. Bush, who, while campaigning for president in 1988 ostentatiously refused to apologize for the killing of 290 Iranians aboard a civilian jet-liner that was shot down that year by the US Navy in the Persian Gulf.
“Blood on his hands” is, clearly, a political cliché. For the right, it is an expression of their politics of grievance, an assertion that Americans are the victims of irrational, baseless Middle Eastern Islamic terrorism and hatred. The right is attempting to use conflict with Iran to assert the moral high ground of American military violence, despite decades of evidence to the contrary. For the mainstream media and what remains of America’s foreign policy elite, calling out Suleimani as having “blood on his hands” allows them to warn about the consequences of a war with Iran without seeming to sympathize with the enemy or ask deeper questions about the morality of American force. It calls out the killing as perhaps unwise, but legitimate, even inevitable. “Qassem Soleimani was never going to die peacefully in his bed,” Bobby Ghosh wrote for Bloomberg Opinion.
"Inevitability" was all over the media in the wake of the assassination and it was deeply disturbing. They didn't cheerlead as enthusiastically as they did back in 2002, in the wake of 9/11, but you could see where this was leading.
Trump chose to escalate the conflict by withdrawing from the nuclear deal and then imposing crippling sanctions. Then he turbo-charged it by assassinating Sulaimani based on dubious evidence (if any.)
Read on to get some important context about the relationship between the US and Iran. There has been a concerted campaign on the right to demonize Iran based upon a sense of besmirched American honor from 1979. And Iran is also acting on "honor" in reaction to the US installing the Shah back in the 1950s. And the wheels go round and round.
Trump brought up the 52 hostages from 1979, which means that the Iran hawks are pushing HIS "revenge" buttons. And we know that he considers revenge to be his primary motivating factor in life after money and fame:
