President Biden announced yesterday that the leader of ISIS, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, had died during an assault in Syria carried out by about two dozen American commandos. Later we learned that women and children were among at least 13 people killed during the raid in Atmeh, a town close to the border with Turkey in rebel-held Idlib Province. This morning, we learned that the trapped terrorist had blown himself up, and others, including women and children, with him.

Well, that’s what people like Hashimi al-Qurayshi are good at.

Ethics Observations:

1. Regarding the Isis leader’s death: Good!

2. Note the overwhelmingly positive coverage by the media, which is desperate to find some way to reverse President Biden’s free-fall. Now contrast it with the Trump administration’s treatment after the military killed Iran’s terror-master Qassim Soleimani with an Iraq airstrike. The Washington Post, for example, among others, tried to minimize both the importance of killing the murderer of an estimated 600 people and disguise the nature of his role with Iran. “Breaking news: Airstrike at Baghdad airport kills Iran’s most revered military leader, Qassem Soleimani, Iraqi state television reports,” the Post headline read. In truth, eliminating Soleimani was far more significant than killing the Isis leader of the moment, whom few had ever heard of. ISIS leaders may differ in “effectiveness” and leadership skills, but they are essentially fungible. Killing one may inconvenience ISIS, but the over-all result is mostly symbolic. Killing Soleimani was, in contrast, a major victory, but it led into 2020, when all the mattered to the Axis of Unethical Conduct (“the resistance”/ Democrats/ the news media) was getting Donald Trump out of office. Thus the strike was downplayed, criticized, and even used to attack the President.

Remember this CNN tweet?

Or such reactions as those by…

…George Washington University lecturer Barbara Slavin, who tweeted, wrongly, “By what legal authority can US forces kill the head of Iran’s Quds Force? Does @realDonaldTrump realize the import of this?”

…#MeToo icon Rose McGowan, whose jaw-dropping tweet was

…Joe Biden, who said, hypocritically, “There is no question that Qasem Soleimani was an enemy of the United States. I feel no sadness at the news of his death. But I have serious concerns about this President’s execution of a potential act of war without authorization of Congress.”

Biden was VP when Barack Obama made similarly unauthorized strikes, and since Soleimani was in Iraq, where the government had asked the U.S. to be, and plotting to kill our troops, the strike was legal.

….Black Lives Matter hero Colin Kaepernick, who, predictably, tweeted,

…and “Squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who said, “We are outraged the President would assassinate a foreign official, possibly setting off another war without Congressional authorization and has zero plan to deal with the consequences.”

All are apparently happy with Joe’s hit, though.

3. In one of its reports on the ISIS mission, the Times reported,

In brief remarks at the White House, President Biden said the decision to send about two dozen helicopter-borne commandos to capture or kill the leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, was made to minimize the risk of civilian harm. Military officials said attacking with a bomb or a missile would have been safer for the troops but could have endangered more than a dozen civilians in the house, including several children.

I know the following ethics position, which I’ve stated before causing some readers to flip out, quit, and begin vendettas against me, upsets a lot of people, but I stand by it. If we are going to fight wars and quasi-wars, we cannot make avoiding civilian casualties a higher priority than winning, or sacrifice American troops so enemy citizens won’t be harmed. This kinder, gentler combat rule, which gradually seeped into the brains of our leaders after World War II, is a major reason the U.S. can’t win wars, and why the wars we attempt last longer and cost more than they should. War is mostly a no-ethics zone, where “the ends justify the means” becomes the norm, not reciprocity and not absolutism, which would ban all wars. Living under a rogue, murderous, oppressive regime is miserable, but it should also be seen by those in that position as dangerous. Such nations threaten the rest of the world, and it is the duty of citizens who obey such governments to take the initiative to overthrow them, whatever the risk, and whatever the costs. They should also be forced to accept the fact that if their country is the enemy of the U.S., so are they.

Maybe that will motivate them to fix their own problem, and not make Americans die because of it.