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Are we safer before or after Solemani - opinion is mixed.

The reaction you will hear when you talk to Americans and Iranians about the killing of Quassem Solemani is mixed, and I reason with both sides even though I tend toward one side than the other.

There are those who accept that the man was evil and had killed both his own people and other citizens, but questioned why Trump took out the man now. They alleged that he did it for political reasons. Unfortunately, he received widespread criticism for it except in his base - 55% of Americans disapproved and only 43% approved the killing. We were all saved from World War III if not that the Iranians exercised caution, they posited.

Some argued that this has changed the rule of engagement for wars where the US has been an advocate of civility since WW II. That the killing of the second most powerful person in a country like Iran has created a bad precedent for rogues leaders like Putin who could, for example, take out the president of Ukraine in the name of him being a terrorist who killed Russians and the US will not be able to do anything about it because of the Solemani ouster from existence. Leaders like Erdogan of Tukey, Duterte of Philipines, Military leaders in Myanmar, MBS of Saudi, etc have now been handed liberty to kill anyone in the name of terrorism and the US will be handicapped in questioning them.

Some said, oh, Solemani killed thousands since the Iranian revolution in 1979 and he deserved what he got. That he has master-minded the torture and the killing of his own people, and hundreds of Americans through proxies all over the middle-east. Yes, but what will be the consequences of such killing. There are so many bad leaders around the world who have killed many people - should they all be droned? Will it kill the ideology they live by, probably not.

One thing is clear, terrorism cannot be bombed out of existence. It is an ideology that has to be defeated through superior idea - ask Obama who killed more terrorists with drones in the middle-east than any American president before or after him. With all the killings of these bad elements, more and crazier extremist leaders developed. ISIS rose to prominence under Obama in spite of him droning as many of them as he could, including Osama and Al Awlaki - an American Islamic cleric who instigated many terror attacks against his fellow citizens. Darkness can only be defeated with light, hate with love, crazy ideology with a sane one. Only time will tell what this bad precedent, because of a cheap political score, will cause. Bad people need to go, but we need to wise in the battles we fight. Iraq and Afghanistan, 19 years after has not destroyed terrorism, it has caused it to spread.

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