Collective punishment: Iran's citizens deserve to die.

President Trump proudly announced a war crime:

"Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day." 

Americans in the Democratic anti-Trump coalition of people who watch MSNOW and read The Atlantic and Heather Cox Richardson and attend town meetings for Oregon Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden feel disapproval, but not surprise at Trump's post. 

That's him, not us. God knows we didn't vote for him. 

But we Americans did. We pledge allegiance to the flag, one nation indivisible, and we pay our taxes. We are citizens. We have immeasurably more influence on American leadership and policy than do citizens in Iran whose electricity may be shut off. 

For seven decades of the post-WWII world American has had a preferred weapon of choice: air attacks on military and civilian targets. We had boots on the ground in Vietnam, but that was a lesson in what not to do. The preference is to bomb countries until they crawl to the negotiating table. We made hostages of their citizens. They weren't bystanders or collateral damage. We treated them as combatants who sympathize with, enable, or at the very least tolerate their government.

The notion that Palestinians living in Gaza tolerated Hamas is the justification for mass destruction of civilian targets. They had to know about the tunnels and maybe helped build them. 

Hospital in Gaza

Residence in Lebanon

University in Iran

Israel, and by extension the U.S., accepted that idea of collective guilt. The U.S. tolerates and enables Israel's bombing of Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.

Accountability goes in both directions. Israeli citizens who were enjoying a quiet evening on October 7, 2023 weren't innocent civilians, not under that rule of collective guilt. They tolerated the brutalization of people in the West Bank. They voted for Benjamin Netanyahu or the far-right policies in his coalition, or at the very least they paid taxes and acted as citizens in a country carrying out Netanyahu's policies. 

There is a lot of hypocritical argumentation regarding responsibility and collective guilt. People who consider the Israelis killed on October 7, 2023 to have been innocent  and the raid to be an outrage accept the necessity of bombing and civilians.  

Tomorrow, at 8 p.m. EDT, unless Trump changes his mind, he will initiate the bombing of civilian infrastructure in Iran. This isn't Israel doing it. It is the USA. This probably will cause tens of thousands of Iranians to die, perhaps invisibly to Americans, one at a time as hospital ventilators turn off and food spoils and water doesn't get pumped or it gets contaminated, but just as dead as if they had been covered in rubble or lined up in front of firing squads. 

The U.S. has signed treaties that declare targeting electrical generation stations to be forbidden, a war crime, a moral wrong.

Do we care? Isn't it just one more thing we have gotten accustomed to and tolerate, like bombing boats in waters off Venezuela? Or ignoring the War Powers Act? Or letting Trump ignore Congress on tariffs and program cuts? Or letting ICE ignore the 4th Amendment requirement that it have a judicial warrants? Some Americans sympathize with Trump; others enable him, All of us are tolerating him. Trump is still in office, our leader, and we are citizens.

Americans elected a Senate that approved Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. We have watched him fire top military people who showed signs of independent resistance to illegal warfighting. We didn't revolt, impeach, or call a general strike, and we still say the Pledge of Allegiance.

Americans cannot have it both ways. If civilians in Vietnam, Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran can be killed because we oppose the policies of their leaders, then we need to look in the mirror and accept the reality that President Trump is not acting alone. Do not be outraged or surprised when terror attacks happen here or Americans are held hostage. Don't presume we are free of moral guilt. Trump isn't committing a war crime. Americans are.

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