Grappling with Deadly Aftershocks

President Donald Trump’s order to kill the powerful and influential Iranian commander, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, has sent shock waves around the globe. The repercussions may prove stunning and unsettling.

Assassinating a leader of a sovereign state is an extremely controversial action – even in times of war. Certainly taking credit for it -- or calling for it, as President George W. Bush did during the early days of the war in Iraq – is to venture into unknown territory.

Americans today may take for granted that the White House tried to kill Cuba’s Fidel Castro, for example, but the public did not learn of this covert operation until more than a decade after. The U.S. government, which long prided itself on holding higher moral ground, had kept its renegade actions a dark secret.

I asked Thomas Powers, who has thought a great deal about covert actions and strategic military tactics, to grapple with this complicated issue, back when I was at The New York Times “Week in Review.” Though the peg is somewhat different – since the nation was then in open combat against Iraq – Powers’s ability to map the lay of the land is still well worth reading.