June 7, 2019
By Mickey Friedman
I thought by now the manager would have pulled me. My knees hurt. My sign is old. I’ve been demonstrating longer than Dustin Pedroia has been playing second base for the Sox.
I began before the Iraq War. Recently, I’ve been thinking my message was yesterday’s news: “Support Our Troops. It’s Time To Come Home.” Especially because candidate Trump declared: “I will never send our finest into battle unless necessary, and I mean absolutely necessary, and will only do so if we have a plan for victory with a capital V … The world must know that we do not go abroad in search of enemies.”
Then, when he made nice with Vladimir Putin, and fell in love with Kim Jong-un, I thought that aside from Syria and his support of the Saudi war on Yemen, he was serious: enough with war, it’s time to come home.”
But here we go again. The Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group. 1,500 troops. And the President threatens war with Iran. There are wars you can win. Invading Grenada. Piece of cake. Panama, no problem. He’s hoping enough of you are too young to remember the wars we never won. Our defeat by a Vietnamese guerilla army after more than twenty years. Three million dead, mostly Vietnamese civilians. The 58,000 Americans who gave their lives. Supposedly to stop Communism.
Irony times a hundred. Today, we’ve got an America President who believes the Russian Communist Putin more than his own FBI. Who brags about the love letters he gets from a North Korean Communist dictator. Meanwhile, the Russians we stopped influenced a U.S. election and helped to shatter the western alliance.
We’re still bogged down in Afghanistan, supporting an unpopular corrupt government. Still enmeshed in the bogus WMD Iraq war they lied us into. Yes, Saddam was a cruel dictator, but Iraq was no threat to the American people. In Kuwait, our coalition decimated their military. Saddam was weakened and we still had access to Iraqi oil.
Our current wars have cost us about $5.9 trillion. Over 480,000 people have died including civilians. Not to mention the uncounted who died of malnutrition and injuries. And it is so maddeningly painful to acknowledge the more than 6,950 US soldiers who have died in these wars. The many more injured. Those with PTSD.
This time it’s Iran. John Bolton, one of those who gave us Iraq, wants to go to war with Iran. Of course, like his boss, he’ll be nowhere near the battlefield.
But if we’re stupid enough to go to war with Iran, we’ll find ourselves fighting a nation with great reason to oppose us. Even Iranians politically opposed to the despotic theocrats, know their history. How America deposed the popular Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in a 1953 coup, propping up the vicious dictator, the Shah. Why? Because Mosaddegh wanted to nationalize Iran’s oil industry and use the oil money, not for the Western oil companies and the Shah’s family, but for the people.
If there’s one word that encapsulates what we did to the Iranian people, it’s Savak. The secret police employed by the Shah. Trained by the U.S. Army and the CIA in surveillance and interrogation. Utilizing sleep deprivation, cattle prods, and a variety of tortures, Savak brutalized those who criticized the Shah. While the Shah and his family diverted billions from the nation’s oil revenues and built glorious palaces for themselves.
More recently, in 2015 Iran negotiated a fair treaty with the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany to severely limit their nuclear program. A deal that was working until the Trump administration scuttled it. A deal arms inspectors say even today they are honoring. A deal Trump despises because it was made by President Obama. America now is punishing ordinary Iranians with extremely cruel and unnecessary sanctions. While defying Congress and selling billions of arms to Iran’s enemies, the Saudis.
I’m guessing John Bolton, Stephen Miller, and the President don’t give a damn about the hell we visited on/are visiting upon the people of Iran. But you should. And the very last thing we should be doing is going to war with Iran. Look beyond the propaganda. Ask yourself: has Iran invaded us?
Today, John Bolton lies about Iran as Cheney lied about Iraq: “The only thing that will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons is regime change in Tehran.”
But for all of Bolton’s mad wishes, Iran has a military of three million. Eighty-three million Iranians will not surrender to America. Because it is we who brought terror to them. And given what Trump is doing now, the Iranians imagine whatever America brings to Iran will be worse.
Our President tweets: “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran … Never threaten the United States again!”
Beware those who beat the drums of war. They bring death and destruction.
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“The Drums of War” was first published in the Berkshire Record on May 30, 2019.