It is not every day that people from all political walks of life will agree with Tucker Carlson, but Friday provided one of those moments. During his nightly show on Fox News Channel Friday night, Carlson questioned President Donald Trump‘s decision to assassinate Iranian general Qassem Soleimani on Thursday.
The former Crossfire commentator took time to attack “hawks” who have pushed for war with Iran for decades and noted that Trump may have opened the door for a war due to the drone strike and a follow-up attack on Friday night.
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“What happened yesterday wasn’t just another symbolic bombing,” Carlson said. “It was a pivot point. Neocons in Washington understood that immediately.”
Trump and his administration claimed that the strike was a defensive measure in response to “imminent and sinister attacks” on United States forces, allies or interests in the area. For Carlson, these sentiments seemed to ring hollow and he openly questioned if the president had taken the right course of action.
“No one in Washington is in a mood for big-picture questions right now. Questions, the obvious ones like: Is Iran really the greatest threat we face? And who’s actually benefiting from this? And why are we continuing to ignore the decline of our own country in favor of jumping into another quagmire from which there is no obvious exit?” Carson added. “By the way, if we’re still in Afghanistan 19 years, sad years later, what makes us think there’s a quick way out of Iran … ?”
Carlson also hit back at Republican Rep. Ben Sasse’s statement calling the assassination of Soleimani “very simple.”
“Nothing about life and certainly nothing about killing is ever very simple,” Carlson responded to Sasse’s comment. “And any politician tells you otherwise is dumb or is lying. Yes, Soleimani was linked to the deaths of Americans. Nobody mourns his passing. But Mexico and China are also linked to the deaths of Americans…Not that anyone in power cares. So does that mean we get to bomb Oaxaca? Can we start assassinating generals in the [Chinese] People’s Liberation Army?”
As Carlson made clear in his closing remarks to the segment, the death of Soleimani is questionable due to its murky motivations and the standard it sets going forward.
“There are an awful lot of bad people in this world. We can’t kill them all. It’s not our job,” Carlson said. “It’s pretty clear that things could start to move in the wrong direction pretty quickly, we’re praying they don’t, but they could.”
….targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2020
Saturday saw Donald Trump address the attacks on Twitter, noting that the United States has more targets on their list totaling to 52, the same amount of hostages taken by Iran during the 1979 siege on the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Carlson joins voices like Colin Kaepernick in criticizing the attacks.
