Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Thursday evening that President Donald Trump had even more legal authority to eliminate Qassem Soleimani than former President Barack Obama had to take out Osama bin Laden in 2011.
Dershowitz, speaking with host Joel Pollak and guest host John Hayward on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight, dismissed arguments that Trump lacked constitutional authority to act against General Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force.
Presidents have lawful authority to direct the killing of enemy combatants, explained Dershowitz.
“[Soleimani] was a combatant,” explained Dershowitz. “There’s no doubt that he fit the description of ‘combatant.’ He [was] a uniformed member of an enemy military who was actively planning to kill Americans; American soldiers and probably, as well, American civilians.”
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Asked to respond to criticism of the attack by the likes of former Obama national security aide Ben Rhodes, Dershowitz said, “This is very similar to what Barack Obama did with Ben Rhodes’s authorization and approval — without Congress’s authorization — in killing Osama bin Laden.
“In fact, that was worse, in some ways, because that was a revenge act. There was no real threat that Osama bin Laden would carry out any future terrorist acts. Moreover, he was not a member of an official armed forces in uniform, so it’s a fortiori from what [Barack Obama] did and Ben Rhodes did that President Trump has complete legal authority in a much more compelling way to have taken the military action that was taken today.” – READ MORE