The imminence ploy

How 'imminent threats' act as the executive branch's license to kill

Mike Pompeo.
(Image credit: Illustrated | BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images, kotoffei/iStock, -slav-/iStock)

The Trump administration's assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani was necessary, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a Fox News interview Thursday night, because the Quds Force leader would have attacked us at any moment. "There is no doubt that there were a series of imminent attacks being plotted by Qassem Soleimani," Pompeo said. "We don't know precisely when and we don't know precisely where, but it was real."

That's not what "imminent" means.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.