It’s easy to debate the merits of President Trump’s call to kill Gen. Qassem Soleimani. The blowback may result in more, rather than less, Middle Eastern bloodshed. The price may be less utilitarian on a global level but still cost more American lives than if we had let Soleimani live. As with most foreign policy questions, that of Soleimani’s death requires ample nuance alongside the point-blank recognition that he was one of the most vile monsters on the planet until we blasted him to smithereens.
Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick discarded both nuance and recognition over the weekend.
There is nothing new about American terrorist attacks against Black and Brown people for the expansion of American imperialism.
— Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) January 4, 2020
America has always sanctioned and besieged Black and Brown bodies both at home and abroad. America militarism is the weapon wielded by American imperialism, to enforce its policing and plundering of the non white world.
— Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) January 4, 2020
In Kaepernick’s estimation, Trump’s folly wasn’t whether he had the legal authority to kill Soleimani, whether it would ultimately cost more American lives, or whether it would cost more Middle Eastern lives in the end. It was that Soleimani is “Brown,” and Orange Man Bad.
The dregs of the Left weren’t quite dumb enough to immediately run defense for the unemployed athlete. But they took the bait the moment TV news personality Megyn Kelly expertly handed them the most milquetoast criticism.
Shame on you, Megyn.
— Ava DuVernay (@ava) January 5, 2020
You should be ashamed. Educate yourself before you talk about racism and legitimate claims. You sound like what you are. Ignorant. Attention seeking. And desperate.
That will be all.
— Ava DuVernay (@ava) January 5, 2020
Megyn doesn’t think a threat to annihilate cultural sites and kill civilians is driven by rank bigotry. That’s Megyn telling on herself. Again.
— Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) January 6, 2020
You should do a segment on this on your show.
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) January 5, 2020
As a white woman, you are in no position to determine what is & isn’t racist in this world just as a man I am in no position to tell you what is & isn’t sexual harrassment at Fox!
— Anthony Clark for Congress (@anthonyvclark20) January 5, 2020
Remember when you defended blackface?
— Thor Benson (@thor_benson) January 5, 2020
I could go on.
Plenty of liberals and libertarians have excoriated Trump’s decision without providing any excuse for Soleimani’s brutality. But only Kaepernick could prove himself the nutjob Pied Piper capable of getting hordes of the Left to attack Kelly — and implicitly defend Kaepernick — to back the notion that a man responsible for killing more Muslims than almost anyone else alive deserves defense because he’s not white.
The former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leader is uniquely responsible for some of the worst human rights atrocities against not just his own citizens, but those in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria. Some 75 million Muslims lived under his ironclad rule in Iran while countless others in the surrounding regions paid for his support for the Assad dictatorship and a North Korean- and Hezbollah-aligned revolutionary movement. Trump, who has attempted to withdraw troops from the Middle East, may stand accused of warmongering, but Soleimani’s IRGC actually are the warmongers. They attempt to augment the Iranian axis of power in the region by any means necessary, no matter how many local lives ended as collateral damage.
More than 100 million Muslims live in the region Soleimani spent his adult life terrorizing. Whether or not one supports the strategy of Trump’s decision, there’s no question that those Muslims would have all been better off without Soleimani ever being born. Kaepernick may claim that black lives matter — though his transparently self-interested hijacking of the movement would indicate otherwise — but his little meltdown made clear that to him and his followers, Muslim lives don’t.
