“Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State, dies at 48,” is how the Washington Post infamously summed up the killing of the head of ISIS.

 

If Baghdadi was “austere”, the word-of-the-day for Qasem Soleimani was “revered”.

 

“Airstrike at Baghdad airport kills Iran’s most revered military leader,” the Washington Post headlined the execution of Baghdadi’s Shiite opposite number.

 

CNN and CBS joined Al Jazeera in describing Soleimani as “revered”.

 

Soleimani was not especially revered in Iran whose cities throb with protests against the theocracy of terror. The ordinary Iranian has the same view of Soleimani as the ordinary Russian did of Beria.

 

It’s not in Tehran, but in the Iowa caucuses where the terror mastermind is truly revered.

 

Senator Elizabeth Warren had tweeted a criticism of President Trump’s decision while acknowledging, “Soleimani was a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans.”

 

Soon, Warren had come under attack for calling the mass murderer a “murderer”.

 

And so she changed her tune, and criticized President Trump for having carried out a “targeted attack on a government official, a high-ranking official for the government of Iran.”

 

There are plenty of Iranians with the courage to speak out against Soleimani, despite the threat of death or imprisonment, but very few Democrats have the courage to even call him a “murderer”.