On January 3, 2020 Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top general was killed from an airstrike commanded by President Donald J. Trump.
This breaking news had spread like wildfire across news channels, stations and social media the morning of the incident. This was a very surprising yet controversial topic resulting in new memes, new opinions and new arguments amongst students on Twitter.
These arguments moved from social media to the classrooms as students naturally picked sides in “Iran vs. USA” One student from Thomas A. Edison Career and Technical High School defended Iran all throughout.
“I’m pro Iran right now” said Kiya Legall. “They have every right to rage war on America because Trump killed one of their highest ranking generals in an airstrike without permission from congress, which in fact is a war crime!”
After being asked if she thought we should “kill them before they kill us” Kiya stresses the fact that Donald Trump had no right to kill Soleimani especially with the way he did it.
“Killing is wrong all around… ESPECIALLY when our president does it without letting Congress know of this outrageous idea beforehand. We shouldn’t interfere anymore… we shouldn’t have interfered in the first place.”
However, Via Faith Villanueva, Kiya’s peer, begged to differ. Via believes as though America had to put a stop to Soleimani before he “put a stop to us.” “Yes I totally agree that what Donald Trump did was unethical especially since he didn’t have any approval to do it but Soleimani wasn’t as innocent as social media is making him out to be. Soleimani was engaged in campaigns that proposed terror attacks on the US.”
Via then goes on to say “Maybe this was more of a safety precaution than it was an assassination who knows.” With the same question being asked “do you believe that we should kill them before they kill us”
“We don’t need to attack Iran anymore. Donald Trump raised tensions with the Middle East whether it was in his best interest to protect us or not but right now we should leave everything as is,” said Via.
While both students had differing opinions they both agreed that the United States should not cause any more harm. There is no need to “kill them before they kill us.”
