BY NATHANIEL BATCHELDER
Pray cooler heads will guide America in the dialogue and decision-making over Iran’s position in the world.
Iran does not have nuclear weapons, and there is no certain evidence that such a program is under way. Certainly Iran has the right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and the interests of world peace demand that these issues be resolved without military action that could launch a catastrophic war.
Another war would destroy America’s painful recovery from the indebtedness of two wars and the 2008 economic crash. Gasoline prices would probably go up another dollar per gallon. The Iraq and Afghanistan war’s final costs will exceed $2 trillion. Some estimates say $4 trillion, or even $6 trillion, including lifelong care for veterans physically or emotionally disabled.
Iran has more than twice the population of Iraq, four times the area, many times the military capability, and would seek support from other nations like Russia and China, possibly sparking an unpredictable regional war.
Political hawks and shock-jocks on talk radio condemn calls for negotiations and dialogue to resolve such matters without military action as weakness.
The U.S. spends as much on military preparedness as the rest of the world combined, so no one can doubt America’s capacity to wage war. It is shocking that the theme song of one national talk show host states, “We’ll put a boot up your ass, it’s the American way.”
The world does not find this amusing or appealing.
More than 6,000 American families grieve the deaths of sons and daughters in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. More than 30,000 U.S. troops have been physically wounded in action, and untold numbers have returned home emotionally and physically disabled. Suicides of war veterans each month exceed combat deaths.
Official estimates of some 100,000 deaths in Iraq and 20,000 in Afghanistan are considered low by other calculations. The British polling group Opinion Research Business [ORB] has estimated Iraqi deaths at closer to one million, with some five million becoming displaced refuges that are homeless or have left the country.
Many believe our wars in the Middle East are breeding resentments that will last lifetimes.
War brings big profits to military contractors and oil companies that simply raise their prices. Everyone else pays dearly, in dollars, lives and blood.
The people of Iran are not well served by having a bellicose posturing leader in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Cowboy professions of toughness are usually hot air, appealing to the pride of some, but are not helpful to the interests’ of peace.
The vast majority of humanity desperately hopes for negotiated resolutions to political tensions to avoid war and its deaths and destruction that ruin lives and wreck economies.
The United States must lead the world in calling for cooler rhetoric and civil dialogue by all nations in the Iran discussion. Israel particularly must relax its rhetoric, confident that its close alliance with the United States and its own arsenal of nuclear weapons [200? 400? 600?] renders it a muscular regional power whose sovereignty is unquestioned.
War truly is hell, as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan remind us too well. Let’s remember that the terrible attacks on America of 9/11 were not from a nation, but from an alliance of individuals from many nations, most prominently Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. attack on Iraq is now admittedly blamed on “faulty intelligence,” misinformation and miscalculation. Vice President Dick Cheney predicted that the Iraq war would last six weeks and that U.S. forces would be welcomed with flowers as liberators.
All Americans opposed to another war must stand behind leaders seeking nonviolent resolutions to world situations that could blow up into wars that would wreck our economy, raise oil prices, profit only a few, and cause incalculable suffering everywhere, while we taxpayers foot the bill.
– Nathaniel Batchelder, a Vietnam veteran, has been director since 1990 of the Peace House in Oklahoma City, a center for public education on justice, peace and environmental issues.
Good poiint(s). But if more rational people don’t prevail, the military industrial complex controlled war mongers will be at it again. What makes this possibility more frightening is that the American people may in fact revolt against being drawn into another war by the politicians who are the only ones who profit from war. Perhaps a revolt is what is necessary to make the point with the isolated, arrogant asses in Washington. Then come November they should ALL be thrown out of office! The 535 fools in congress up for re-election are an abomination, closely followed by the senile senate.
War never brings happiness. only more money spent on war.and many young men and women death.