Trump, Iran and Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Yes, we should be thinking about Franz Ferdinand and how wars escalate way beyond the morons who set them in motion think.

One of John Kenneth Galbraith most memorable observations is from his The Age of Uncertainty (1977). Writing about the much-discussed causes of the First World War, he observed:

There was a final consideration, one that it is always thought a trifle pretentious to stress. Rulers in Germany and Eastern Europe, generals in all countries, held their jobs by right of family and tradition. If inheritance qualifies one for office, intelligence cannot be a requirement. Nor is its absence likely to be a disqualification. On the contrary, intelligence is a threat to those who do not possess it, and there is a strong case, therefore, for excluding those who do possess it. This was the tendency in 1914. In consequence, both the rulers and the generals in World War I were singularly brainless men.

None was capable of thought on what war would mean for his class - for the social order that was so greatly in his favor. There had always been wars. Rulers had been obliterated. The ruling classes had always survived. To the extent that there was thought on the social consequences of war, this was what was believed. [my emphasis]

In the US-Iran conflict, that observation definitely applies to the Supreme Leader on one of the sides. And it's not Ayatollah Khameini. I just saw the Shields and Bobo episode from Friday, Shields and Brooks on Iran general's killing, 2020 Democrats' fundraising 01/03/2019:

As he normally does, Bobo struggled to find a way to support what Trump has done while trying to sound thoughtful about it.

Shields often gets tied up in knots trying to apply the Beltway Village consensus of the moment. But when it comes to war, he takes it seriously;

Every act like this has risk and reward, and I don't know anybody who can predict what will happen, Judy. I mean, it violates all of the rules that we have about going into armed conflict with disproportionate force and with fully understood objectives and with an exit strategy and with backing of our allies and so forth.

None of those was met. And the president doesn't have the benefit of the doubt. He treats truth like a second home. He only lives there occasionally, and, therefore, he doesn't have the natural credibility that American presidents — and it has been hurt.

The Afghan papers, most recently The Washington Post, revealed 18 years of deception and deceit and self-delusion about the United States in Afghanistan, the lying that we have had and the evasion.

So, you know, I don't see it — I see it more impulsive than strategic, just like the entire Trump administration. It doesn't appear to be thought out. [my emphasis]

And he adds later:

And I guess where take some — depart from David is, we have been down this road before. We had a major Republican leader address the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention and assure us that the foreign leader has weapons of mass destruction, there's no doubt he's amassing them to use against us, against our allies, I'm confident that he's on the verge of having nuclear weapons.

That was Dick Cheney. That was 18 years ago. And that was hundreds of thousand of deaths ago. As a consequence of this act, the Iraqi Parliament may very well do what it hasn't done. And that is act in concert and ask us to leave.

If they ask us to leave, now, what does that mean for our troops in Syria? What does that mean for any of our influence in the area?

Now, I just — I do not see any coherent, thoughtful policy emanating from this. It's almost like the administration has been scrambling to come up with a rationalization. They did it, and now, well, we're going to brief you on Tuesday. We're going to brief you 120 hours after the event as to what happened.

We're going to do it from a resort in Florida, I mean, suggesting the gravity of the moment — all of that. I mean, for a man who's sensitive to theatrics and optics, like Donald Trump is, none of this makes any sense. [my emphasis]

Targeted killing, aka, assassination, has become a routine practice for the United States. It's dubious legally, to put it mildly. And in purely pragmatic terms, it's highly problematic. But the Cheney-Bush, Obama-Biden, and Trump-Pence Administrations were all fine with it. Congress has made no serious attempt to stop it. So it's a Bipartisan practice. But it's problematic in the extreme.

Abeer Abu Omareta et al report for Bloomberg News (Iraq Votes to Expel U.S. Troops After Killing of Iranian General 04.01.2020):

Soleimani was as revered at home as he was reviled in some quarters abroad, and thousands of Iranians, some shouting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” poured into the streets to pay tribute after his body was flown back home. His death dealt yet another blow to world powers’ crumbling nuclear deal with Iran, with Iranian officials meeting late Sunday to consider further retreats from the 2015 pact, which President Donald Trump abandoned more than 18 months ago.

Abdul-Mahdi said he was supposed to be meeting with Soleimani the morning he was killed. The general was carrying Iran’s response to a Saudi letter on how to de-escalate tensions between the two countries. [my emphasis]

We don't know exactly what that was about. But knocking off senior officials in the process of responding to a proposal to de-escalate tensions is not necessarily the best thing to be doing. Also, there's the whole murder thing involved.

Here's a Lawfare piece with a discussion of the legal dispute over assassination, Legality of Targeted Killing Program under International Law n/d; accessed 01/05/2019.