If It Were Me, I'd Pull the Trigger

By Matt Martin

It was the last year of the Trump administration. We all saw it on the news. The United States killed an Iranian general in Iraq. Former President Donald Trump ordered it. The strike came from an unmanned aircraft controlled by someone thousands of miles away. A guy many in the country had never heard of was killed along with members of his staff, while driving away from the Baghdad airport on his way to mischief.

It got my attention. I spent thirteen years of my career in the US Air Force piloting MQ-1 and MQ-9 unmanned aircraft—usually armed—hunting down bad guys in Iraq, Afghanistan, other places. Four years later I’m thinking about it again as the Middle East threatens to boil over, and I try to imagine what the results of the upcoming election will mean for the American role in the world. In 2020 a US president decided to kill an Iranian general. The echo of that decision continues to reverberate. And it could happen again.

It was after that strike that the American people learned this was not just any Iranian general, but the most important Iranian general. Qasem Soleimani. The commander of the Quds Force, another entity many in the country had never heard of. Orchestrator of terror attacks all over the region. Perennial thorn in the side of the United States. A revered figure in Iran.

But it had never been US policy to attack Iran directly. There had been no declaration of war. There was no Congressional authorization to use military force against Iran. It would be a stretch to say the Authorization to Use Military Force passed after 9/11 to go after Al Qaeda and the Taliban applies to Iran.

We all know it. We learn in grade school that Congress declares war. Not the President.

So I couldn't help but ask myself the question: If I were in the left seat of the MQ-9 cockpit that night and I received a targeting message to fly over the Baghdad airport, find Soleimani’s car, and put a couple of Hellfire missiles into it, would I have done it?

Full transparency. I thought the Trump administration’s Iran policy was misguided. The purpose of the US military is to achieve national security objectives. Our objectives in the Middle East should be to keep Iran in check, prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons, and promote stability so that places like Iraq and Syria don't turn into safe havens for terrorists. Military force is a bad tool for these goals. Sanctions are not much better. Diplomacy, economic development, and a free press are the best. It was the US Government who sent me to several fancy war colleges to teach me just that.

But diplomacy is hard. The use of force is a lot easier, and it can be very satisfying—emotionally—when a bad guy is killed. It was all the Obama administration could do to disenthrall the United States from the reliance on the military for all these things.  The agreement the Obama administration negotiated with the Iranian government to freeze the country’s enrichment program in exchange for an easing of sanctions was probably the best anyone could hope for as an initial effort.

Trump's inclination to tear up this agreement to instead apply "maximum pressure" against the Iranian government was a terrible idea. It took away US diplomatic tools and played into the hands of Iranian leaders. It bolstered their power over their own people because it gave all Iranians a common enemy: the United States. It emboldened the Iranian government to act and make the region less stable, strengthening Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. It cost blood and lots of treasure.

So the US military probably shouldn't have taken that shot. As emotionally satisfying as it was, I disagree with the decision to target Soleimani. Not at that time and not in that place.

But when I put myself back in the left seat of the cockpit, when I imagine looking down through the sensors on the MQ-9 at the Soleimani convoy, and I think about receiving the orders to strike, there's no question.

I take the shot.

How come? Doesn't make sense. It might even be illegal. You're the pilot in command. Why not draw the line?

Lots of reasons might pop in your head at the time. It's a military target. The Quds Force has been designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization. The United States has an inherent right to self-defense. And if the Department of Defense says Soleimani is about to launch an attack, the pilot of the MQ-9 is not really in a position to argue—especially when staring at a moving target with only a few moments to act.

There are institutional reasons. Military pilots operate at the tactical level and are empowered to make tactical decisions: where to position the aircraft to achieve the desired effects. Deciding not to fly when the weather is bad. Which weapon to use to blow up a target. Am I looking at the correct target? Et cetera.

But when it comes to the big strategic decisions—like whether or not to start a war with a country—that's supposed to be done by generals and senior civilian leaders. Not only are military pilots not expected to make those decisions, but refusing to follow instructions from your command center based on your own strategic judgement could get you in a bit of trouble with the brass (I can tell you from experience).

Then there is a concept from behavioral economics known as “action bias.” It's the idea that a person might feel an impulse to act to gain a sense of control over a situation. And in military operations, this happens constantly.

Case in point, tracking a convoy like Soleimani’s —one that operators in the military would call a high value target or high value individual (HVI). There were many times in Iraq and Afghanistan when I was tracking a vehicle or convoy that I was pretty sure contained Taliban or Al Qaeda or Islamic State leaders. I had a pretty good idea that these HVIs were on their way to harm Americans or US allies. Maybe they were going to plant explosive devices on the roads. Maybe they were going to set up an ambush someplace. Maybe they were just heading to a meeting where they would plot and scheme to do all of the above.

The right thing to do typically is to keep following them, see who they meet up with, where they go, and piece together their network over time. But that takes a lot of restraint. And when improvised explosive devices keep killing Americans or our allies, having to piece together a terrorist network over time can make you feel helpless and frustrated.

Whereas blowing them up right now, feels like you have control.

These guys are bad. If I kill them right now, they can't do bad things anymore.

Never mind that the plans they laid are already in motion and killing them might not actually degrade those plans. Action now feels like you have control.

So I have complete sympathy for the crew in the cockpit of the MQ-9 on January 2, 2020, staring down at the Soleimani convoy. They were told to take him out. And everything in their training, and in their DNA as humans, told them to take the shot. The did the only thing they could do. And I would've done the same.

Good tactics can't fix a bad strategy. As you think about who you want to be Commander in Chief, maybe think about what sort of orders that person might issue on a whim, and how orders are usually followed.

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Matt Martin is strategist in the US defense industry and retired US Air Force reconnaissance pilot and mission commander. He is author of the book Predator: The Remote Control Air War over Iraq and Afghanistan—A Pilot’s Story. His views expressed here are his own.