Beware of plausible but faulty justifications for war
Some people in the 41st LD Democrats tried, but failed, to pass a resolution in support of the Iranian people in their struggle for liberation from their government. The resolution did not mention Israel, the Palestinians, or the history of U.S. meddling in Iran.
The notion that America should help the Iranian people by condemning the Iranian government is plausible. But here are reasons why the notion in this case is deeply flawed:
- In the current political situation, denouncing the oppressiveness of the Iranian government feeds the flames of U.S. and Israeli military aggression towards Iran.
- The person who submitted the resolution was on the street protesting against the Iranian government alongside local Republicans who support Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump’s illegal and unprovoked invasion of Iran.
- Neither Israel nor the Trump administration are bombing Iran for the purpose of helping the beleaguered Iranians. They’re doing it to help Israel maintain military primacy, to gain control over Iran’s oil, to maintain U.S. unipolar hegemony, to attack an ally of Russia and China, and to deprive China of oil.
- It is a travesty of justice to concentrate on the suffering of the Iranian people at the hands of their leaders, while ignoring the war crimes, apartheid, and genocide of the Israeli government against the people of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Iran. Israel is trying to do to Lebanon and Iran what it did to Gaza.
- Likewise, concentrating on the Iranian people at the hands of their leaders while ignoring the suffering and deaths resulting from stupid, unnecessary U.S. wars is a travesty of justice. Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?
- In fact, the United States has been oppressing Iran with brutal, starvation-inducing sanctions. As reported here, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent bragged that the sanctions, which flagrantly violate international law and are considered acts of war, “have caused Iran to run out of dollars, which means Iran cannot pay for imports or stabilize its currency, leading to significant inflation.” Bessent gloated: “Their economy collapsed.” Bessent took credit for the violent protests and riots in Iran. So, why not condemn the U.S. for oppressing the Iranians with sanctions?
- The Lancet medical journal reported that between 1971 and 2021, US and EU sanctions killed over half a million people annually. Sanctions killed people especially in Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran.
- The U.S. and Israel paid for and encouraged protest groups in Iran. Claims of protester deaths were exaggerated.
- The U.S. made Iran into an enemy by overthrowing the democratically-elected government in 1953, installing the autocratic Shah, and then, after the 1979 Iranian revolution, arming Iraq during the eight year-long brutal Iran-Iraq war. An American company even provided Iraq with a precursor to mustard gas. The U.S. tried to overthrow Iran by covert CIA means. See The Twilight War: The Secret History of America’s Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran. No wonder they hate us! Again, you should condemn the U.S. for its oppression of the Iranians!
- If you want to help the Iranian people, the way to do so isn’t by bombing Iran, killing their children, and destroying their schools, hospitals, factories, water facilities, electricity generating plants, etc. The Iranian people are suffering horribly at the hands of Israel and the U.S.
- Indeed, the notion that we should help the Iranians by bombing them is suspiciously similar to the notion that we should help “liberate” the Vietnamese, Iraqis, Libyans, Afghanis, Venezuelans, and Cubans. In all cases, the real reasons for U.S. intervention were/are far less noble than what we were publicly told.
- In fact, in the case for bombing Iran is more transparently bogus than in previous wars. This is discussed in a New York Times essay summarized below.
In the NY Times essay
It’s Not Trump, It’s America
Lydia Polygreen says that Trump is both an aberration and a culmination of American history. Trump is an aberration because of how corrupt he is and how willing he is to break democratic norms and accumulate power. But he’s a culmination because his attack on Iran is a natural continuation of decades of U.S. imperialism. In the Forever Wars (post WWII U.S. wars), Polygreen writes, “there was at least a veneer of American idealism, as thin and self-deceiving as it may have been. Trump has dragged America into a war completely unmoored from any pretense to virtue. It is a naked exercise of power with no cloak of providence or moral superiority. In its brazenness, it is almost bracing.”
Trump’s lie and aggression are most clear in Iran, but they apply as well for the abduction of Maduro, the unrelenting support for Israel, and the strangulation of Cuba.
Since WWII, American elites have imagined that military might can craft the world in desirable ways. It’s rarely the case. Americans also imagine that our country is immune from damage by adversaries. That’s not true, and the costs and blowbacks from endless wars and meddling are real. Now with the war in Iran, America may face its comeuppance, since Iran is successfully hitting back, destroying bases and installations, and threatening world trade. (Quite possibly, the war in Iran will destroy the Trump administration and badly damage the GOP.)
The point isn’t that the Mullahs in Iran are innocent. Likewise, neither Saddam Hussein, Putin, Xi, Maduro, nor any other Hitler-du-jour is innocent. The point is that the U.S. should generally mind its own fuckin business, should stop provoking wars, and should stop unfairly favoring one side in conflicts where both sides have legitimate claims. Don’t go overseas in search of demons to slay.
I think on foreign policy, Trump is the culmination of decades, or centuries, of American imperialism and hubris. But domestically, Trump and the current GOP are an aberration. As the essayist said, Trump has ripped off the thin veneer of idealism in U.S. foreign policy.
The U.S. largely CREATES or provokes the enemies that it later demonizes.
For example, the U.S. armed the Mujahedeen who later became the Taliban.
As mentioned above, the U.S. armed Iraq in its war against Iran. Later the U.S. invaded Iraq.
Likewise, before the bombing of Serbia, the CIA armed the Kosovo Liberation Army that was, basically, a terrorist organization. And the U.S. backed ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Croatia. U.S. propaganda greatly overstated the nobility of the U.S. intervention.
Unfortunately, provocation is the case, also, with the war in Ukraine.
The U.S. hypocritically ignores or rationalizes its own aggressions and the aggressions of its allies. The U.S. invades, bombs, sanctions and overthrows governments all over the world. It regards the entire world as its legitimate sphere of influence. But it doesn’t allow its enemies to control even their own border lands (e.g., Ukraine and Taiwan). Instead, the U.S. overthrows governments near its enemies, arms opposition groups, and amasses bases and missiles. See The Stunning Hypocrisy of U.S. Foreign Policy on Common Dreams, or the extended version here.
This essay was also published here.
