Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman Laura Cox singled out Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI-08) for her response to the death of Qasem Soleimani.
Soleimani was killed Thursday night in a drone strike ordered by President Trump at the Baghdad International Airport. He was the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, a designated terrorist organization.
The U.S. State Department announced in April 2019 that Iran was responsible for the deaths of 608 U.S. troops during the Iraq War, and Soleimani was the head of the Iranian-backed forces conducting those operations. The State Department said Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of 17 percent of all U.S. troops killed in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, Fox News reports.
“We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war,” President Trump said Friday afternoon. “We take comfort in knowing his reign of terror is over.”
The president said Soleimani was in the process of “plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and personnel.”
Democrats quickly began describing President Trump’s actions as an “assassination” that will increase tensions between Washington and Tehran. They also complained that the president acted without congressional approval.
Several members of Michigan’s congressional delegation weighed in on the matter, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI-13), who called the president “lawless” and “reckless,” The Michigan Star reported.
Slotkin, an ex-CIA analyst, released a statement Friday morning saying she has deep concerns about “the consequences of this action, which was made without consulting Congress, or our allies and partners in the region.”
Cox said Slotkin “continues to parrot the same worn-out policies she advocated for in the Obama administration, which led to the decision to send Iran $1.7 billion in pallets of cash.”
“President Trump sent a clear message to Iran, and to terrorists around the world, that aggression against the United States, its citizens and our troops will not be tolerated,” she said. “Slotkin is a poster child for failed foreign policy decisions, and our nation is better off today than it was four years ago because of the president’s swift and decisive leadership.”
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Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of The Minnesota Sun and The Ohio Star. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
