Attacking Iran Would Be Monstrous

The U.S. isn’t going abroad in a search for monsters to destroy. The U.S. has taken the monster’s part.

The Financial Times’ report on the approaching U.S. attack on Iran opens with this line:

As oil prices surge and Donald Trump orders one of the largest American military build-ups in the Middle East since the Iraq war, negotiations between the US and Iran increasingly resemble a race against time to avert a new regional conflict [bold mine-DL].

The report isn’t entirely wrong in its description, but it gives readers the false impression that there is some crucial dispute that needs to be resolved to avoid war. Any good news report on the approaching conflict should be able to explain why there is likely to be a war, and most major news outlets are struggling to do this. There is only one reason that war with Iran is coming, and it is happening because the president is choosing to go down this path out of reckless arrogance. The U.S. has waged many wars of choice for bad reasons, but a new war with Iran would stand out as one of the most avoidable and unnecessary of all time.

There is no cause for war. The U.S. government is preparing to attack another country not because of anything that its government has done or threatened to do to us, but solely because the president feels like doing it. The president created the current crisis by making reckless threats and then by ordering a massive buildup in preparation to carry them out. We know that he has been goaded into doing this by the Israeli prime minister and hardliners here at home, but in the end the decisions and the responsibility are his and his alone.

No one can explain what the president wants to achieve by attacking Iran. As far as I can tell, he wishes to use force to punish Iran because they will not cave to his unhinged ultimatum. He wants to use violence because he likes it and he thinks it makes him look “strong.” Trying to understand his thuggish approach to foreign policy in terms of achievable goals misses the point. Much like his use of economic warfare to devastate Iran, he just wants to cause destruction in their country because they will not bend the knee to him.

An attack on Iran might “work” in the same sense that broad sanctions can be said to “work.” That is, broad sanctions are destructive and cruel, and they make the population more miserable. No doubt U.S. forces can cause extensive damage and kill lots of people, but without some identifiable political goal this will be just so much mayhem. Using force in this way is vicious and wholly unjust. It is despicable to put American forces in harm’s way in such a bad cause.

It is obvious, but it bears repeating that this has nothing to do with helping the people of Iran. Our government has been inflicting collective punishment on the people of Iran for many years, and attacking their country will only harm them more. Aggressors often dress up their crimes by claiming to be liberators, but we all know this is a propagandistic lie. The people of a country are the ones that always suffer the most from the chaos and devastation of a war. If our government truly wanted to help the Iranian people, it would immediately lift as many sanctions as possible, and we know it will never do that.

We are used to these senseless wars, so it is easy to forget how insane it is that our government is going to such extraordinary lengths to inflict death and destruction on a country that cannot possibly hurt us. It is remarkable how far out of the way our government will go to pick a fight with some weaker adversary simply because it can. The U.S. isn’t going abroad in a search for monsters to destroy. The U.S. has taken the monster’s part.