“But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse.” – John Stuart Mill, “The Contest in America” 1862.
It is the 1942 midterm election and there is mounting opposition to the Democratic administration’s handling of the war effort. Resistance to the rationing, food and material shortages, inflation and price controls being experienced by the public is increasing. The result…Republicans gain 47 seats in the House and 9 seats in the Senate thereby substantially reducing the Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress. Despite growing discontent, America remains engaged …an acknowledgment of the existential threat that both Germany and Japan pose to the world order. Americans understand what is at stake never more so following the attack on Pearl Harbor…a memory which persists and is fueled by the will to persevere notwithstanding the economic inconveniences they are experiencing. It is a just war… a war fought to foil the ambitions of a genocidal maniac intent on world domination fueled by a goal to cleanse the world of non-Aryans.
Now compare and contrast to the present day.
America and the world order is faced anew with an existential threat…that of radical Iranian Shia-inspired Islam. An Islam that is headed, not by a Fueher, but by a Supreme Leader. It is an Islam that calls for “Death to America” and the West in general…an Islam that is blatantly anti-Semitic invoking recollections of Nazi Germany. An Islam that runs counter to liberal western secular values . An Islam that looks to carry out a jihad and impose theocratic rule on the rest of the world and cleanse it of infidels. An Islam that if allowed to develop nuclear weapons will certainly hold the world hostage.
This begs the question of whether the recent rout of Republican’s in the midterms, in large part due to Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran and its affect on the economy in the form of higher gas and energy prices, is the result of a public not truly understanding the real threat that Iran poses to the world. Or is it that they understand and simply cannot or will not tolerate the temporary inconvenience of the high price of energy or the human toll that may be necessary to stem the evil that is insidiously at our doorstep in a world that has become exceedingly smaller by virtue of advanced weaponry? Was Trump wrong to go to war? Is this war not a just one?
This latter question is important. For those who would argue that the war against Iran is not “just” let’s examine how we got here.
Iran was first designated as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984 following the October 23, 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 American serviceman…an attack carried out by Hezbollah, a proxy funded by Iran. In September 1984, Hezbollah with Iranian support perpetrated the suicide bombing of the U.S. embassy annex in Beirut. In 1985 Hezbollah, again with financial support from Iran, hijacked TWA flight 847, an American passenger aircraft, murdering a U.S. Navy diver. Beginning in 1985 Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence were implicated in a series of Paris bombings that killed 12 and wounded 200. In 1992, Hezbollah carried out a suicide bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires that killed 29 and wounded some 250 others. Iran has also supported or perpetrated terrorist actions in Bulgaria, India, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and the U.S. And I would be remiss if I did not mention in the litany of terrorist supported and facilitated activities by Iran the takedown of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 as well as the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 supported by Iranian supplied weapons, financing and training. So as we can see Iran has been gradually spreading its Shia-based Islamic poison across the Middle East and Europe behind its call for Death to America and the West.
So, in essence, Iran has already been waging war against the U.S. and the world order…just incrementally.
But, one might ask, shouldn’t all diplomatic efforts be exhausted before entering into an armed conflict? Isn’t that required before a war can be called just?
In that context, critics of the war will cite Trump’s withdrawal of the U.S. from the JCPOA that Obama had, with other western countries, entered into with Iran as the precursor to the heightening tensions with Iran. The fact is the JCPOA just kicked the can down the road in terms of Iran’s developing nuclear weapons. Trump understood that and rightly withdrew from the agreement. More importantly, notwithstanding and apart from the JCPOA, Iran for its part continued to foment, through its proxies…Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis…the destabilization of the Middle East in its quest to establish a caliphate and to strengthen its theocratic rule.
So the legitimate question that Trump faced was do I, as my predecessors did, continue to avoid confrontation or do I finally take the action necessary to insure that Iran can never acquire a nuclear capability that can eventually be used to hold the world hostage. He chose to take preemptive action rather than be reactive to any ultimate threat Iran will pose in the future knowing that it would translate into the current economic challenges facing the American public in the form of high gas and energy prices.
But while Trump, in his decision-making, was thinking about the long term American citizens were and are more focused on the short term. The result…his miscalculation led to the electorate turning over the legislative branches of the government to Democrats in hopes that they will bring an end to the conflict. Whether this is accomplished and under what conditions remains to be seen.
When John Stuart Mill wrote the essay which contained the quote above it was in the context of the Civil War and the question of whether Britain should interfere in the conflict on the side of the South, in part, because Southern cotton was essential to Britain’s textile industry. In the end, Britain, which had formally abolished slavery throughout most of its empire in 1833, with emancipation taking effect 1834, refrained from doing so which went against their economic interest but was in alignment with their moral values.
We, as a government and people, have a decision to make. Do we relent and give in to our short term economic interest and end the war? Or do we persevere in the face of the economic challenges and uphold western values in order to insure a peaceful future?