While I disagreed with Rick Santorum on
a number of items on his presidential campaign platform, one detail seemed to
constantly stick out and it bothered me intensely. Santorum had, and perhaps still has, a very
hostile attitude toward Iran. His statements
led me to believe that under his presidency, the Global War on Terror would expand
to include a new front in Iran.
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| 2009 Iran election protests |
Some may say that “we’ve been at war
with Iran since 1979” and all that militaristic baloney, but the fact is that
we really haven’t. Our country’s armed
forces are no more at war with Iran than with the Mexican drug cartels or the
Canadian syrup smugglers. Yes, I’m
certain that the Ayatollah’s regime looks the other way as jihadists organize
in rural Iran and make their way from Iraq to Afghanistan. Such has been the case for years, but the
very fact that the ex-Mujahadeen Taliban are armed with CIA-provided weapons
from the 1980s is a testimony that our country really ought not to intervene in
foreign conflicts when they don’t pose a direct danger to us. After all, arming the Mujahadeen ended up
arming the now-Taliban, and arming either side in the Syrian civil war will
either support a bloody dictatorship or a rebellion whose ranks is rife with
jihadists.
There are many reasons I can name why
our country shouldn’t go to war against Iran.
The first is that we’re financially drained and our young veterans are
incredibly war-weary after nearly twelve years in Afghanistan, Iraq, and North
Africa. Another is that I believe in the
concept of blowback. The combination of
the CIA’s operations in 1980s Afghanistan and the permanent occupation of Saudi
Arabia (the Muslim holy land) after Desert Storm both resulted in Al Qaeda’s
war declaration on America, as well as the capability of radical Islamists to
plan and carry out attacks on the West from Afghanistan.
Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army—a Shi’a
Islamist militia—gave the coalition untold amounts of grief in southern
Iraq. Lord only knows what fragile
stability in Iraq, paid for by the blood of American, British, and Iraqi troops—will
be undermined if Sadr’s militia answered the call to help their Shi’a brothers
in Iran.
I remember Santorum protesting against
Ron Paul’s opinions by trying to spout out the militant nationalistic rhetoric
that “we’ve been at war with Iran since 1979!”
Paul had an excellent point: the Iranian people’s grievances against
American intervention pre-date the Ayatollah’s propaganda to 1953. In the name of waging the Cold War, the CIA
orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically-elected Iranian prime minister
Mohammed Mossadegh, replacing him with a puppet prime minister and giving
dictatorial power to the Shah, Mohammed Reza.
In the eyes of the Iranian people, it was America that instigated the
dictatorship of 1953-79. In their
memory, they’re not blind to the fact that the Reagan administration supported
Ba’athist Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War.
If we go to war against them, it will play directly into the xenophobic propaganda
of the Ayatollah’s regime, and it will rally Iranian patriots to hold their
nose and support the Ayatollah in fighting for their country.
However, there’s one reason in
particular why I wish to avoid that war at all reasonable cost. During the Iran-Iraq War, Iran sustained the
majority of casualties. The Iranian war
machine was able to last as long as it did because Ayatollah Khomeini founded
the Basij—the national militia—three million strong by 1985. One of the main duties of the Basij at the
front lines was to serve as human shields.
For every offensive, there were
thousands of teenage boys, many as young as ten and twelve, who marched forward
in columns toward the enemy. Their job
was to martyr themselves on the battlefields by stopping bullets with their
bodies in order to draw the fire away from the army behind them. They did their job exceptionally well and
hundreds of thousands of Iranian teenagers died that way.
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| Scenes from the Iran-Iraq War |
I disagree with their cause for
dying. Most of them were convinced they
were simultaneously fighting for their country and for Islam. I, on the other hand, am a Bible-believing
Christian. In Matthew 28 Jesus gives us
the great commission to go to the corners of the world and teach the Good News
of the Resurrection and afterlife. I
know for a fact that if my country goes to war against Iran, there will be many
thousands of teenage boys meeting our troops at the border. These boys’ job will be to serve as bullet catchers,
and they’ll do their job exceptionally well.
This war with Iran will kill hundreds of
thousands of Iranians—Basij, poor-bastard draftees in the army, and many
civilians through collateral damage. Not
only will these human beings, created in the image of God, be slaughtered by
the combined war machines of two countries, but they will never hear the
Gospel. They will never have the
opportunity to be saved. They will
forever be robbed of the privilege of answering the great commission themselves,
teaching other brothers and sisters about Jesus Christ and living in peace. To make matters worse, dead people cannot
build a libertarian society. I don’t
want these people to suffer or die in another decade-long war.
I know many people suffer under the
Ayatollah’s regime today, but we must not free them through military
might. I believe the people who will
free Iran are the Iranians themselves. These
people will be the internet hackers who bring Western books, movies, music, and
ideas into a country where orthodoxy is the law. These people will be the brave missionaries
who risk their lives to teach the Bible and story of Jesus of Nazareth—whom I call the Christ—to the hungry souls in the Underground Church. These people will be the black marketers, the
rebels who ignore such anti-liberty policies like bans and embargoes and import
merchandise to sell to Iranians under the table.
How many times now have they taken to
the streets to protest against their government? How many more times will their protests be
silenced by riot police and the Basij?
It can’t be much longer until Khameini dies of old age, or the Iranian
people rise up successfully. Frankly, I’m
in favor of new ideas—religious, political, and social—being the driving force
behind the New Iranian Revolution. That’s
why I say NO war with Iran.
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Iran protest image by Milad Avazbeigi and used via CC BY 2.0 license. Iran-Iraq War montage courtesy of Wikipedia and used via CC BY 3.0 license. Both images were obtained from Wikimedia Commons.
