On January 3rd, President Trump unilaterally ordered the killing of Qassem Soleimani, a high-ranking Iranian general who commanded the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. There is no doubt that Soleimani was an evil terrorist and a dangerous enemy of the United States. However, the timing of the attack was unforgivably rash.
Before engaging in air strikes, the president must consult with Congress, our allies in the Middle East, and, most importantly, our state augurs and priests. By neglecting this due diligence, Trump has defied the gods, displayed extreme hubris, and put all of America in the crosshairs of terrible divine wrath.
Soleimani was killed in Iraq, at Baghdad’s international airport. Whether Trump had the legal right to target Soleimani under the terms of the 2002 AUMF is up for debate. What cannot be denied is that Trump has committed a twofold breach of xenia: first, by killing a guest under the protection of another sovereign nation; and secondly, by killing a guest while oneself a guest in that nation. The gods hold the laws of hospitality in very high regard and Trump’s flagrant defiance of hosts’ rights will surely not go unanswered.
Our military is not President Trump’s personal plaything, to be deployed in service to his personal ambitions. The Constitution mandates an equal separation of powers: the soothsayers who commune with the gods, the priests who interpret their visions, and the President who executes the gods’ will. Nonetheless, Pentagon officials report that at no point before ordering the strike did the president consult his astrologers to determine whether the stars favor a new war. Nor did he hold even a cursory meeting with State Department prophets and oracles to try to determine the future course of his actions.
Most damningly, he eschewed the counsel of the official White House priests, whose job it is to tell the president whether he risks angering the gods by ordering military action on a sacred day.
One need only remember the Gulf of Tonkin incident of 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson blasphemed Poseidon by ordering naval strikes during Neptunalia, and the sea god condemned America to a humiliating defeat in Vietnam.
Furthermore, President Trump has ignored his constitutional obligation to perform the necessary rites to secure the favor of the gods before embarking on a new war. He did not sacrifice any goats or rams to Ares, nor birds to Apollo; nor did he convene the priests of Zeus for a public supplication and blessing. The Constitution also mandates that the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff appear before Congress to conduct a divination ceremony, seeking signs of the gods’ approval in incense smoke, bird flights, and animal entrails. President Bush also failed to do this before going to war with Afghanistan, citing the need for swift, decisive action against terrorism, and the result was a $4 trillion war and the deaths of one out of every six American soldiers to a mysterious pestilence.
Have we as a country learned nothing?
President Trump is within his rights to promote the security of the United States, but he must do so within the bounds of ethics, international law, and the gods’ proscriptions. We must condemn this reckless action that has jeopardized the stability of the entire Middle East, and put Americans in danger from Persia’s powerful gods.
