No, This Is Not Normal

It is not normal for a country to decide to assassinate one of the most important leaders of a rival country when that leader is visiting a third country.

No, this is not normal. No, this is not normal. Let us repeat this as many times as necessary, because if we don’t, we will accept that dysfunction is becoming part of our lives, thus lowering our standard of civil requirements and accepting what we should reject as inadmissible.

No, it is not normal for a country to decide to assassinate one of the most important leaders of a rival country when that leader is visiting a third country. The target may very well be, as is the case with Qassem Soleimani, one of the pillars of a religious dictatorship, and may have contributed to instigating armed opposition to the U.S. and its allies throughout the Middle East. Lovers of peace and freedom will not shed a tear for him, but normalizing a state assassination opens the field to all kinds of arbitrary behavior, especially when the two countries involved have not declared war.

No, for a president who had assured people that he wanted American soldiers to return home, who said when he withdrew from Syria that the U.S. would no longer be “the policeman of the Middle East,” it is not normal to order a strike which then forced him to send 3,000 more soldiers to the Middle East. It cannot be normal to try to make us believe that this killing was to “stop a war, not to start one,” as Trump asserted, and that this would not serve to radicalize the Iranian regime, putting an end to the country’s participation in the greatest achievement for peace, the nuclear deal that the Iranians abandoned yesterday.

No, it cannot be normal for the president of the most powerful nation in the world to brag on social media that the U.S. has identified 52 targets in Iran, some “very important” to Iranian culture, which, in the case of a deliberate attack, would constitute a war crime.

No, no matter how normal it is for American presidents to resort to armed conflict to divert attention from their domestic problems, Trump’s total lack of coherency and the erratic and unpredictable way in which he manages his foreign policy must serve as a strong warning to all who do not intend to embark on a senseless military escalation.

No, this is not a question of supporting the Iranian regime, which should change radically for the good of its people. This is a question of us not ceasing to affirm the basic principles that should govern all relations between countries and peoples, and not allowing the irrational to become normal.