By Yuram Abdullah Weiler

“Soleimani’s shoe is worth more than Trump’s head. Fair punishment means that US forces, bases and warships must pay the price.”

—Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah

Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, the martyred commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), has become the sardar asmani, the heavenly commander, following his assassination by a terrorist act of the United States. Now, the US president, secretary of state and other officials are lying about this heroic Iranian martyr, whose lofty stature stands in sharp contrast to the base American politicians.

America is a land built on lies and ruled by liars. Dishonesty and deception abound in a country that was founded on the blood of millions of slaughtered indigenous peoples, who had been assured by the Northwest Ordnance of 1787 that “The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians,” and that “laws founded in justice and humanity shall from time to time be made, for wrongs done to them, and for peace and friendship with them.” Over the centuries, the US government made numerous treaties and then proceeded to break them.

US officials lied about the My Lai massacre, which was carried out by American soldiers under the command of Lieutenant William Calley on March 16, 1968. Between 450 and 500 Vietnamese, mostly women, children and old men, were mercilessly gunned down, and the US army covered up what happened, that is, until journalist Seymour Hersh exposed the American atrocity, which by no means was unique. Even the Gulf of Tokin incident in August 1964, which US President Lyndon Johnson and secretary of defense Robert McNamara used as a pretext to escalate American involvement in Vietnam, was a fabrication.

More recently, US President George W. Bush lied to the American people by saying that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in order to justify a pre-planned invasion of Iraq for the purpose of usurping the country’s oil wealth. On February 5, 2003, US general Colin Powell lied before the United Nations Security Council on behalf of his boss “Dubya,” accusing Saddam of manufacturing WMDs and having links with the terrorists that committed the 9/11 attacks, none of which was true.

US officials have a long history of lying

US politicians and officials have a long history of lying. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged this truth himself during a Q&A session at Texas A&M University in April 2019. Pompeo admitted that, as a West Point cadet, he was told, “You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.” Yet as CIA director, he confessed, “We lied, we cheated, we stole.” At this point, Pompeo has threatened a “decisive and vigorous” response should Iran rightfully respond to this act of American terrorism, and, in almost the next breath, he has asserted that the Washington regime is “committed to de-escalation.”

Trump, Pompeo and other US officials have also lied about General Soleimani. From his palatial resort compound in Mar-a-Lago in the US state of Florida, the foul-mouthed American president called Martyr Soleimani “the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world,” and claimed that he “was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel.” Moreover, Trump insisted that by means of the extrajudicial killing, he “did not take action to start a war,” and bragged about how he had destroyed Daesh and killed Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as if he had done all this himself.

Pompeo, the former CIA director, now lying in his capacity as US secretary of state, claimed that Martyr Soleimani was a “bad guy... who was conducting active plotting against the United States of America, putting American lives at risk.” Insisting that the US terror attack was not only justified, but also “The intelligence assessment made clear that no action - allowing Soleimani to continue his plotting and his planning, his terror campaign - created more risk than taking the action that we took last week.” Yet no US official has produced any hard evidence of these alleged plots. What is known is that Pompeo and US defense secretary Mark Esper flew to Mar-a-Lago on Sunday, December 29, 2019 to inform Trump of “specific intelligence” after which Trump made his insidious decision to murder General Soleimani.

By conceding that he lied, Pompeo certainly cannot expect people to believe him that Gen. Soleimani had been plotting to kill Americans. Likewise, Trump’s braggadocio rings hollow when measured against the heroism of Martyr Soleimani, who in Hamadan, Iran in 2018 had said that the US president’s “rhetoric is still that of a casino, of a bar. He talks to the world in the style of a bartender or a casino manager.” The commander of Quds Force taunted the draft-dodging Trump, saying, “You are well aware of our [Iranian] power and capabilities in the region. You know how powerful we are in asymmetrical warfare.”

How Daesh was created

In truth, the US created Daesh as a result of its illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. After Saddam’s regime collapsed, L. Paul Bremer, head of the so-called Coalition Provisional Authority, planted the seeds that would eventually sprout into the terrorist group by first dissolving the regular Iraqi military forces, and then by banning the Ba’th Party. Bremer’s and his CPA’s blunder, scholar Adeed Dawisha explained, was to “forgot to ask themselves what it might mean to turn thousands of military officers loose on the streets without compensation.” Evidently, the inchoate Daesh was formed among these ex-Ba’thists and unemployed soldiers.

By 2007, Bremer’s policies had brought Iraq to the brink of civil war, allowing al-Qaeda to gain a toehold, and thereby justifying a US troop “surge” to quell the sectarian violence. The Americans, by bribing some of the tribes into breaking their allegiance to al-Qaeda, managed to ensure continued internecine violence and thereby justify the continuance of their occupation. In the 1980s, the US had midwifed al-Qaeda through Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, and used it as a proxy against the former Soviet Union.

After al-Qaeda in Iraq had transformed into Daesh under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Washington pointed “its terrorists” towards Syria with the goal of toppling the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, a strong ally of both Iran and Russia. As David Kilcullen, a former adviser to both Gen. David Petraeus and former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, conceded, “There, undeniably, would be no Daesh if we [the US] hadn’t invaded Iraq.”

Gen. Soleimani was a man of peace

General Soleimani was a man of peace. When eight Iranian diplomats and one Iranian journalist were killed in Herat, Afghanistan in Mazar-i Sharif in August 1998 by elements of the Taliban, Martyr Soleimani diffused the situation without additional violence. After the 9/11 attacks, Commander Soleimani allowed intelligence sharing with the US in the fight against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. He even contemplated that “maybe it’s time to rethink our relationship with the Americans.” But his feelings changed abruptly when George W. Bush named Iran as part of the “axis of evil” in his January 2002 address to congress.

Then in June of 2014, America’s creation, Daesh, which had lost ground against Russia and Lebanese Hezbollah forces in Syria, headed back into Iraq, and by October, Baghdad International Airport was under mortar attack. General Soleimani was invited by Iraq’s officials to come to the rescue, and by early 2015, forces under his tutelage had managed to push back the terrorists to Tikrit. For this, then Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi thanked Iran for its help, and praised Commander Soleimani as one of Iraq’s most important allies in the fight against the Daesh terrorists. Furthermore, al-Abadi saluted the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF or al-Hasd al-Sha’bi), organized under Martyr Soleimani’s direction, as “the hope of the country and the region.” How ironic is it that US warplanes, which once gave General Soleimani’s forces air cover while battling Daesh terrorists, were also the means of his martyrdom.

In short, General Soleimani was a brave, selfless and resourceful Iranian commander who fought US-backed terrorists in Iraq and Syria, thereby saving countless innocent lives. By killing the most popular public figure in Iran, terrorist Trump has shown himself to be of less worth than the head of a nail in the heel of one of Martyr Soleimani’s shoes.

Yuram Abdullah Weiler is a former engineer educated in mathematics turned writer and political critic who has written dozens of articles on Islam, social justice, economics, and politics focusing mainly on the Middle East and US policies. His work has appeared on Tehran Times, Mehr News, Press TV, Iran Daily, IRIB, Fars News, Palestine Chronicle, Salem-News, Khabar Online, Imam Reza Network, Habilian Association, Shiite News, Countercurrents, Uruknet, Turkish Weekly, American Herald Tribune and Hezbollah. In addition, he has frequently appeared as a guest commentator on Press TV, Al Etejah, and Alalam. A dissenting voice from the “Belly of the Beast”, he currently lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico USA. Weiler wrote this article for Press TV website.