The Killing of Qassem Soleimani and the End of the War on Terror
Yesterday the president gave the order to conduct a drone missile attack on Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite military unit the Quds Force. The unit is the international arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and is the country’s primary mechanism for organizing extremist and terrorist organizations throughout the Middle East. As the head of the unit Soleimani has long been held directly responsible for the use of IED’s against American forces during the occupation of Iraq from 2003 to 2011. There is no doubting that Soleimani played a pivotal role in the death of US soldiers, Iran’s support of terrorist activity, and broader attacks against American interests for the last 20 years.
But there also must be no doubt that the specific way he was killed marks the end of the American war on terrorism. It was an assassination of a recognized state representative within the territory of a third state using tactics that to this point were reserved ONLY for nonstate actors (i.e. terrorists). The blurring of the line between traditional military tactics, counterterrorism, and terrorism has been a central topic throughout the nearly two decades of the War on Terror. Legally, debates have centered on the question of whether terrorists are ‘combatants’ due the same basic protections normally afforded prisoners of war or…
