Narrative #2: Soleimani killed hundreds of Americans

If you’ve watched any of the media coverage surrounding the Qasem Soleimani assassination, you’ve likely heard TV talking heads claim that Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans.  The exact amount varies from pundit to pundit, but 600 is a common number used to express the number of casualties Soleimani is responsible for. Not surprisingly, context for these figures is never provided and the average viewer is left to assume that Soleimani must be some kind of Ted Bundy style serial murderer who roves around inside U.S. borders picking off innocent American civilians in their homes for kicks.

So where does this assertion come from?  Did Soleimani really kill 600 Americans, because on its face, that may seem like reasonable justification to “eliminate” him.  The American deaths attributed to Soleimani are based on casualties suffered by American troops during George W. Bush’s Iraq War.  General approximations show around 4500 U.S deaths during the war, about 500 of which came at the hands of Shi’ite militias. The Soleimani accusations are based on this subset of America’s Iraq War casualties, which have been inflated from 500 up to as much as 1,000 by those who would like to villainize Iran as much as possible. 

Let’s first assume the ridiculous presumption that Soleimani is responsible for all American deaths at the hands of Shi’ite militias in Iraq.  Does this necessarily mean he needed to be assassinated? After all, these American casualties all occurred more than a decade ago, mostly during a brief period in 2004 and later in 2007 with the famous David Petraus “surge”.  There’s no reason to assume that just because Soleimani threatened American troops more than 10 years ago that he poses any threat whatsoever in the year 2020.

Of course, this assumption that Soleimani was responsible for all 600 American deaths is preposterous to begin with.  The obvious truth that the corporate press willfully neglects is that America fought the majority of the Iraq War for the Shi’ites against their Sunni enemies, and in particular, in support of the Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which were the most Iranian-linked Shi’a groups involved.  A majority of these 600 Shi’ite attributed deaths occurred as a result of American conflict with Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shi’ite cleric and Iraqi nationalist who had minimal ties to Iran and wanted both the U.S. and the Iranians out of Iraq. Instead of aligning with Sadr, America chose to stick with and empower the groups that were closer to Iran, meaning Soleimani, being a top general for the Iranian special operations Quds Force, was essentially an American ally for most of the war.

It was Bush and the neoconservative architects of the war whose decision to invade and fight an entire civil war on behalf of the Iranian-backed Shi’a in Iraq that empowered Soleimani and Iran and gave them a great deal of additional influence throughout the region.  Now, the exact same people who gave Iran such a gift are the ones who whine endlessly about how we have to fight wars all over the region to curb Iran’s influence and assassinate their leaders.

The assertion that Soleimani killed 600 Americans is a flat out lie.  Of the 600 or so Americans who were killed by Shi’a militias in Iraq, most were killed by forces who had very little connection to Iran other than being Shi’a.  The Iranians have been accused of supplying Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFP) and Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) that were used by enemy militias to kill Americans, but the evidence for these claims consists of nothing more than unfounded assertions.  

The truth is that the primary accomplishment of America’s invasion of Iraq was to put the most Iranian-friendly Shi’a groups in power in Baghdad and kick all of the Sunnis out and into the hands of extremist insurgency groups like al-Qaeda and the original form of the Islamic State.  To claim that Soleimani is an imminent threat because a few hundred American invaders were killed over a decade ago by forces, some of which had minimal ties to Iran, is laughable. If these hawks are really so scared that someone like Soleimani is about to terrorize American troops in Iraq, there’s an obvious solution.  Just bring them home.

Click to read Part 1