"If I had a hammerI'd hammer in the morning. . .I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sistersAll over the land.
Original song by Pete Seeger, 1949, with these revised lyrics by Peter, Paul, and Mary, 1962
The United States has a hammer.
I was in junior high school when I sang along with Peter, Paul, and Mary in my parents' Chrysler Newport with its AM radio. I never thought about whether a hammer generated love. In adulthood I learned that we often have the wrong tool for the job at hand.
As a financial advisor I learned everyone has problems, even prosperous people. The frustration for prosperous old people is that their money, wonderful as it is, rarely fixes their most pressing problems: their own declining health and the mistakes their children and grandchildren make.
This comes to mind because of our war with Iran. The U.S. faces a real problem, exacerbated by our ally Israel and the tribal and religious schisms of the Abrahamic religions. The U.S. has a legitimate wish, that the countries of the Middle East all get along with each other, with Israel, and with the West, and that Iran in particular not be a hostile power. Ideally, it would be a region of Switzerland-style countries. That is impossible, alas. The countries' national consciousnesses are centered around their own particular form of tribe and religion, and each is sure God is on their side.
The U.S. is stuck in this insolvable mess because we and the world need the oil that comes out of the region; because the U.S. has political and emotional ties to Israel; and because the U.S. has a guilty history with Iran. Many Americans have forgotten that we organized a coup to overturn Iran's democratic government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 and installed a pro-West dictator, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in its place; Iranians have not forgotten. In 1979 they staged a revolution against that dictator, energized by revenge against the U.S. We are still dealing with the aftermath of this history.
President Trump has a tool: the U.S. military. The U.S. can destroy nearly anything we want anywhere in the world, a extraordinary tool. We have bombed military sites and oil facilities in Iran. Trump announced that he planned to destroy the civilian electric and water infrastructure of Iran, which might well result in millions of civilian deaths if water-borne diseases spread in the absence of clean water and sanitation. That action may be popular in Israel and among many in the U.S. After all, they are Muslim, believers in the wrong prophet, and they vow revenge against us.
Bombing Iran is almost certainly the wrong tool to get what the U.S. wants: a friendly Iran, or failing that, a perpetually harmless Iran. Either would require an Iran with government legitimacy formed around something other than anger with the U.S. and Israel. Bombing Iran and eliminating its leaders, including ones with the potential of forming a government dedicated to anything but revenge, is the least likely way to get the Iran government we want.
The potential new government dangled by the West is a return of the dictatorship we established in 1953, in the form of Pahlavi's son. How likely would it have been in the U.S., 50 years after our revolution, to welcome back a British monarch to replace James Madison? The answer, if we remember our own history, is that we went back to war against the British, the war of 1812. They burned down our White House, but they did not get regime change.
Israel squandered much of the goodwill Americans felt toward it in the decades after WWII. Israel appears to be yet another intransigent belligerent in a region of tribal zealots, in an endless cycle of vengeance for past vengeance. Scorched-earth bombing may be in Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's political interest. I expect it is. Trump let the U.S. be the impetuous hammer for Israel's foreign policy. We confirm to Iran and the Muslim world that we are indeed the "Great Satan" being led by the "Little Satan." Our bombs won't hammer out love, peace, and justice. The war we are waging isn't a move toward reconciliation, or a lasting anything, except more war.
Good goal. Wrong tool.
President Biden got played by Netanyahu. Trump is getting played even worse.
[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]
7 comments:
Trump and Netanyahu like to blow things up because it’s such an effective distraction from their criminality. But if you criticize Israel’s murderous policies, don’t you risk being labeled antisemitic?
“We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”
― Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Iranian regime
The quote above expresses the actual motives of the Iranian regime, which have nothing to do with the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953.
Peter makes a fundamental error. The jihadist Iranian regime wants nothing less than the conquest of the entire world by their extreme version of Islam. They are not motivated by "revenge" for 1953.
People often ask me as an evangelical (lower case) why American Evangelicals (upper case) and those who want their political support, have such unwavering support Israel in spite of Israel's horrible human rights record? Why Israel among the Semitic tribes in the Middle East?
To be sure, there is more than just the argument that they need to be protected from another Holocaust or annihilation by the neighboring Arab (and Persian states) as Michael T regularly claims.
The truth is that this belief is deeply rooted in many Christians’ 20th century interpretation of scripture which aligns biblical prophecy with political backing. Many see the 1948 formation of the state of Israel in the “promised land” as a fulfillment of divine promise. It's why the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is so important. You don’t want to mess with that. Many believe that supporting the Jewish state as essential to the ushering in the "end times". An enemy of Israel is an enemy of God. You're starting to hear this kind of talk by Hegseth and others in the hawkish Right. What's strange is that you also hear anti-Jewish sentiment seeping from dark corners of the GOP.
There is a literal interpretation of apocalyptic biblical prophecy where God's promises to Abraham and Israel are viewed as valid today. "Christian Zionists" believe that the return of Jewish people to Israel is part of God’s plan for the Second Coming of Jesus and the fulfillment of prophecy. What’s interesting to me is that Israel is technically a secular state. I always wonder if this is this the same “Israel” talked about in biblical prophecy. Maybe we'll see.
Many older and more theologically conservative Evangelicals are firmly in the “Israel can do no wrong” camp. But I wonder if this group will continue to sway public sentiment to support Israel. A quick look at recent polls seems to show this view among younger Evangelicals is waning.
If all you have in your toolbox is a hammer, all your problems look like nails.
A sizable percentage of the world’s Muslims are Islamist supremacists, who proudly—read piously—resort to violent jihadist tactics. This includes the Iranian mullahs.
“We love death as you love life” is their hammer. There is no noteworthy corollary among Christian, Jewish, nor any other sort of religious fundamentalists.
The foregoing informs the current Iran War calculus at least as much as Netanyahu’s (Israel’s) uncompromising militarism, or Trump’s recklessly blithe opportunism.
For a religious fundamentalist corollary, remember the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. Christian Serbs killed 8000 Bosniak Muslims. It is legally recognized as the first genocide in Europe since the Second World War. Muslims don't have a monopoly on killing people in the name of religion.
If you don’t think Christians and Jews are just as crazy as Muslims, you must have missed the “end times” rhetoric going around. Some commanders are telling our troops this is a holy war. Armageddon will bring about the Second Coming. God is on our side.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/03/us-israel-iran-war-christian-rhetoric
Post a Comment