In 2002, Republicans smeared Max Cleland - who lost three limbs in Vietnam - of coddling terrorists, because he didn't want to go to war in Iraq. Today, that legacy lives on in Georgia. I don't know how much that will resonate beyond the Fox News crowd, but there it is.
It's worth pushing back on the argument that Soleimani was a terrorist. He wasn't. He was a soldier, targeting soldiers (at least as far as taking on the US is concerned). He did support terrorist groups who tended to attack US diplomatic targets, but there is some evidence he didn't direct those sort of attacks. There are US servicemen and women who are dead or maimed because he supplied them with weaponry. He was our enemy on the field of battle. But he was more like Rommel than bin Laden. Allowing Republicans to cast anyone who opposes us in the Middle East as a terrorist allows them to cast every conflict there through the lens of 9/11. It's worked for about two decades and it needs to stop.
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