General Soleimani was assassinated because he was successful at opposing the US empire and defeating their terrorist proxies.

Soleimani was not a mastermind of terrorism, as the corporate media alleges. He was a mastermind of legitimate resistance against American illegal occupation and state-sponsored terrorism in the Middle East. Moreover, Soleimani is a figure of almost mythical status for legions of young Hezbollah supporters, Houthis in Yemen, resistance fighters in both Iraq and Syria, Islamic Jihad in Palestine, and all across the Global South.

The defeat of Islamic State and their assorted proxies in Syria and Iraq exposed the dirty war that the U.S. had orchestrated and it’s dishonest, hypocritical claims about fighting terrorism. It’s not so much Iran’s military capability but its influence in the region, in particular Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen that upsets Washington. Soleimani was instrumental in defeating their terrorist proxies–al-Qaeda and ISIS, in Iraq and Syria. He was a fearsome enemy of Sunni terrorism and played a massive role in halting the spread of ISIS. That is why Soleimani became such a hate-figure for Washington. He had thwarted the American imperialist agenda for subjugating the region according to its strategic desires.

Rogue economist Michael Hudson sheds light on what is in effect a protracted “democratic” oil war: “The assassination was intended to escalate America’s presence in Iraq to keep control of the region’s oil reserves, and to back Saudi Arabia’s Sunni terrorists (Isis, Al Qaeda in Iraq, Al Nusra in Syria and other divisions of what are actually America’s foreign legion) to support U.S. control of Near Eastern oil as a buttress of the US dollar. That remains the key to understanding this policy, and why it is in the process of escalating, not dying down.”

The US national security establishment came to understand that Soleimani was the key strategic asset for Iraq to eventually assert control of its oil wealth, while progressively defeating their terrorist proxies. That’s why his days were numbered.

Hudson, in this must read article elaborates on something I’ve written about before. The dirty little secret of the war on terror is that the US  uses terror groups as proxies to effect regime change while pretending to fight them. And, of course, the corporate media plays along.

Dr. Hudson also relates the backstory. “I sat in on discussions of this policy as it was formulated nearly fifty years ago when I worked at the Hudson Institute and attended meetings at the White House, met with generals at various armed forces think tanks and with diplomats at the United Nations. My role was as a balance-of-payments economist having specialized for a decade at Chase Manhattan, Arthur Andersen and oil companies in the oil industry and military spending. These were two of the three main dynamic of American foreign policy and diplomacy. (The third concern was how to wage war in a democracy where voters rejected the draft in the wake of the Vietnam War.) The Vietnam War showed that modern democracies cannot field armies for any major military conflict, because this would require a draft of its citizens. That would lead any government attempting such a draft to be voted out of power. And without troops, it is not possible to invade a country to take it over”.

He says that the solution for the US, in order to maintain its empire, has been to utilize airpower combined with terrorist proxies to wage war on countries that refuse to follow Washington’s diktat’s. Crucially, this means pricing you oil or natural resources in dollars and recycling them through Wall Street.

The petrodollar is what ensures that the US dollar retains its status as the global reserve currency, granting the US a monopolistic position from which it derives enormous benefits from playing the role of global hegemon. This privileged position of holding the reserve currency also ensures that the US can easily fund its war machine by virtue of the fact that much of the world is obliged to buy its treasury bonds that it is simply able to conjure out of thin air. To threaten this comfortable arrangement is to threaten Washington’s global power.

This salient foreign policy dynamic is key to understanding the crucial role that Saudi Arabia plays through its control of Wahabi Sunnis turned into terrorist jihadis willing to sabotage, bomb, assassinate, blow up and otherwise fight any target designated as an enemy. So in addition to playing a key role in the U.S. balance of payments by recycling its oil-export earnings are into U.S. stocks, bonds and other investments, while buying US armaments, Saudi Arabia provides manpower by supporting the Wahabi members of America’s foreign legion, ISIS and Al-Nusra/Al-Qaeda. Terrorism has thus become the “democratic” mode of today U.S. military policy.

Perversely, the upshot of this assassination could be the opposite of what the US hoped to achieve. On Sunday, Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi joined a majority of the Iraqi parliament in demanding that the US—after expending trillions in treasure and blood—leave the country forthwith.

With his death, Soleimani may be about to achieve the goal he strove for in life: Withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq. His assassination, will upend Iraq’s strategic positioning. The Iraqi attempt at balancing between Washington and Iran will be destroyed by this reckless act. It may well mark the beginning of the end of the US presence in Iraq, Syria, and ultimately of America’s worldwide empire.

I will not shed any tears. Our corporate-empire has been terrible for most Americans. It has made us venal and corrupt, it has destroyed the middle class, and it has entrenched a small subset of sociopaths into positions of total, unaccountable power.

Good riddance.