Shadi Hamid's 'America is evil' strawman

Hamid, at The Atlantic:
The United States has done terrible things in the Middle East. To even casual observers of the region, this should be clear enough. That, however, doesn’t mean there is a moral equivalence between Iran and the United States. Elevating America as a somehow unique source of evil takes necessary self-criticism and turns it into narcissism. It insists on making us the exceptional ones, glorifying ourselves by glorifying our sins. To suggest that American officials are at the rarefied level of the deliberate, systematic mass murder and sectarian cleansing that Soleimani helped orchestrate isn’t just wrong; it’s silly.
It's also ... not what is happening.

American criticism of the Soleimani assassination generally hasn't suggested that America's bad guys are as bad as Iran's bad guys. (I'm not sure how to do that moral balancing, anyway, but that's not what the criticism has been.) Instead, the criticism has been that Trump's decision didn't make Americans safer, and that it might have been a dangerous and unnecessary escalation of the low-level conflict that could lead to a shooting war the United States seems ill-equipped to win.

 That's a different critique. But it's the one most critics of the president are making. Hamid's piece doesn't really make sense.

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