The U.S. war with Iran has strong defenders.
They say we need to destroy Iran because they are Muslim and trying to conquer the world for Allah. The war is self-defense for Jews and Christians.
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| Morning, January 6, 2021 |
“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
The commenter said that a statement like that justifies treating Iran as a life-or-death threat:
These are the words of a jihadist Islamic death cult that thinks it will ultimately triumph because it loves death more than we love life. An ideology like that in possession of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, capable of carrying them is an unacceptable threat to the entire world.
There are good reasons for Iranians to be profoundly angry with the USA. Claiming a religious purpose is standard operating procedure. More plausible to me is lingering anger for the coup we arranged in 1953. We made an enemy. We removed a government that intended to use Iranian oil resources for the benefit of the Iranian people. We installed instead a government of our choice that offered their oil to the West on the cheap.
How seriously should Westerners take the Ayatollah's language? Isn't he justifying holy war? Surely that is reason to fear and hate them.
Maybe not. I dismiss that kind of talk, just as I would hope Muslims dismiss it when coming from the West. There is no difficulty finding Jews and Christians with words of murderous intent.
The words aren't by a former political leader. These are a command from God Himself in a sacred text that Americans hold when taking the oath of office. Deuteronomy 20 reads:
However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.
Pretty rough stuff. A Muslim might read this and believe genocide is central to Judeo-Christian belief.
Almighty God, who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle, you who stirred the nations from the north against Babylon of old, making her land a desolation where none dwell, behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous. Snap the rod of the oppressor, frustrate the wicked plans, and break the teeth of the ungodly. By the blast of your anger, let the evil perish. Let their bulls go down to slaughter for their day has come, the time of their punishment. Pour out your wrath upon those who plot vain things and blow them away like chaff before the wind.
I consider language like this in a public building to be unconstitutional and blasphemous. I wish Christians would condemn linking U.S. warmaking and Christ, but I have not seen much of it from American Jews and Christians. The Pope condemned it from Rome, saying that "God cannot be enlisted in darkness."
The war won't end when the "evil perish" and Iranian "teeth are broken," nor will it end when Iran imposes Sharia Law on Americans. It will end with a negotiated peace in which Iran's interest in believing its boundaries and sovereignty are protected. It will end when the Trump succeeds in giving Bibi Netanyahu whatever foreign policy victory he needs to keep Israel's justice system from putting him in prison, in which case in gratitude to the U.S. he will praise Trump effusively for his "heroic actions." Hail Trump!
The seeds to end of the war are planted. Iran showed they have a weapon that survives a first strike. They can put bombs on oil infrastructure and close the Strait of Hormuz, throwing regional and Western rivals into an economic chaos. It is a security backstop they possess as a future threat and warning against American and regional rivals. It is a threat they can keep in the background, but not use, rather like our nuclear weapons. Iran doesn't need a nuclear weapon. They have mines, drones, and bombs that can reach vulnerable targets. Israel has nuclear weapons that can hit Tehran. It is the stability of the modern world: mutually assured destruction.
Citizens should pay attention to what each side needs for peace, not the holy war comments of an Ayatollah or secretary of defense. The war will end when Netanyahu and Trump can bask in glory over something.
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27 comments:
I've said it many times. Whenever you mix religion with anything, it always turns out bad. Mix it with politics and you get war.
Correction: Pete Hegseth is Secretary of War, not Secretary of Defense. You evidently didn't get the memo.
In business negotiations, prudent players typically weigh what the best and worst options for them are if they can’t reach a settlement. That’s how they draw the line whether to walk away or fight. The difference with the US and Iran is if the US gives up and walks away, the Iranians win. If they get annihilated , they also “win” because they believe they get rewarded in the after life. That’s the most dangerous kind of enemy because they will never “cry uncle”.
Hegseth can beat his chest and quote Old Testament scripture as though we are the “Chosen People” fighting for the “Promised Land”, but that will change when the body bags start to pile up. War for the US is an option. Not for Iran. And of course
Trump will say the war was Hegseth’s idea anyway and Trumps devotees will believe him. And the lost lives? Well they were “losers”.
If you are Secretary of Defense, you're defending your country. If you are Secretary of War, you're on the offense and starting wars. There's a difference.
A little off topic, but I was reading about Nixon's final days. He said this when leaving. "No man or no woman came into this Administration and left with more of this world's goods than when he came in. No man or no woman ever profited at the public expense or the public till." Times have changed.
We have an aggressive unreasonable Israeli government, an aggressive and aggrieved Iran, and a country led by an impetuous demented old man at war with each other. It’s going to be difficult to find an out of this mess with these 3 components. I’m not optimistic.
"More plausible to me is...." "I dismiss that kind of talk.....just as I would hope...."
Operative words, "me" and "I". But as the poet said, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them".
Sure, it was 1950's Western influence in the dynastic Pahlavi/Mossadegh fight that drove the Ayatollah's fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989, as well as the Shiite who nearly stabbed Rushdie to death in New York in 2022 in obedience to Khomeini's fatwa.
Western leftists reflexively cast observant Muslims as victims of the West, while at the same time patronizing them with the projected conceit that pesky Islamist dogma and its violent ideation are just a stage, a front, a coping mechanism in the face of Western evils.
Nonetheless, if we posit a functional Hegseth/Mullah equivalency, it must be owned not just in the breach but in the observance.
Are, in fact, Jews and Christians under a command to do genocide, a command by God Himself? If you think that is true, then please say so clearly.
No, they are not. It can be argued that Old Testament Jews were, or believed they were. Hegseth repulsively co-opts that language.
My point is that aptly noting Hegseth's excesses hardly vitiates the Islamist (fundamentalist Islamic) menace. Far from it.
I had not understood that the Old Testiment has been revoked for Jews or for Christians either. I thought that believers thought the text was sacred and eternal. Look, I am not a believer, but I am not trying to mock those who are. I am, though, trying to show an equivalence between the Christian nationalists and Zionist Jews of today -- or at least the ones comfortable with displacing people on the West Bank -- and the religious zealots of Islam. If I take Muslim zealots seriously then I feel some need to take Christian and Jewish ones seriously. My arguement today was that this is a war about politics, not religion, and it is being done because of the domestic political needs of the leaders.
It’s a splinter-log parallel at play except both parties have logs in their eyes.
More breach versus observance, this time where the Old Testament is concerned! I’ll skip discussion of shellfish and homosexuality.
More pertinently, for fundamentalist Islam there is zero distinction between religion and politics. That’s why the mullahs rule Iran.
Ayatollah Khomeini was, and in some ways still is, the spiritual leader of the Iranian revolution, whose goal is the conquest of the entire world by Islam, even if Iran has to burn in the process.
The equivalent Christian, the Pope, has never said that he doesn't care if Rome Burns as long as Christianity conquers the world.
Hamas, another practitioner of this jihadist Islamic ideology, demonstrated exactly how this is supposed to work on October 7, 2023. They spent a few decades building tunnels under all of the inhabited areas of Gaza. Then they committed atrocities against Israel, civilians. In the ensuing war, they hid in those tunnels under their civilian population, using those civilians as human shields, so that damage to those civilians could be used in a propaganda war against Israel.
They did not care if Gaza burned, as long as their greater goal might be achieved.
Peter seems unwilling to believe that enemies like this exist. But there is clear evidence that they do, that they pose an existential threat to modern civilization, and that we need to eradicate them before they do it to us.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas slaughtered 1,200 Israelis, mainly civilians. In response, Israel has slaughtered over 73,000 Palestinians, mainly civilians. Who is worse?
Right. Bombing Iran back into the Stone Age is more likely to deter domestic terrorist attacks, particularly since Elon has dismantled the effectiveness of the federal government. Be very afraid of those Jebusites! Kill every one of them.
Except Checkers, and we’re not giving him back.
1,500 down, just 9,498,500 to go!
International law clearly states that when you use civilians as human shields, you are responsible for their fate.
Hamas is responsible for the harm that came to the civilians they purposely hid under. Hamas allowed no civilian Gazans into the tunnels.
Mike is essentially demanding that Israelis value the lives of Palestinians higher than the lives of their own citizens. Especially in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, that was not going to happen.
The Gazans buried under the rubble by Israel's carpet bombing were not human shields. Michael is providing excuses, not justifications.
The use of human shields by one party does not absolve the attacking party of its own legal obligations to protect civilians. The attacking force must still adhere to core International Humanitarian Law principles.
When a bank robber holds the customers hostage, the police should rush in and shoot everyone in the room right away. Then blame the robbers for the deaths and claim they had no choice.
The rubble was created when Israel destroyed buildings that contained tunnel entrances. The inhabitants of those buildings had already been told to leave them.
The buildings were destroyed because they had been booby-trapped by Hamas, and were unsafe to enter.
Something like 50% of the people killed in Gaza were Hamas operatives. It is totally legitimate to kill your enemy in a war, especially when it is a war that they started. The other 50% of the casualties were civilians that Hamas chose to hide among — human shields, in other words.
In my religious studies, I learned there is commonality between the Quran, The Zold Testament, and the Torah.
I believe that most people don't quite understand that.
My point, is the the various religions almost all have the same foundation, and interpretation of those ancient stories.
The evolution of the Judism, Christianity, and Islam is simply communities amplifying and followingwhat they seem benefits them the most.
And that interpretation and evolution continues today.
Unfortunately, it's more like "my god is better than your god".
As of late 2025, an estimated 78% to over 80% of all buildings in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed, creating roughly 61 million tons of rubble. UN reports indicate that 92% of residential buildings have been impacted, making them largely uninhabitable and rendering vast areas of the Gaza Strip destroyed. To claim all of that was booby trapped is absurd.
As of early 2026, Israel estimated it had killed 10,000 to 17,000 Hamas fighters in the Gaza war, according to reports in the BBC and Congress.gov. Those estimates are undoubtedly inflated, but they’re still a far cry from 50%.
The god with theocracies is better?
Those among Trump's base who trying to turn the U.S. into a White "Christian" nation, such as Pete Hogselth, are our version of the Taliban.
No one knows the real numbers, because the numbers all come from Hamas.
Hamas had two decades to build, tunnels, install booby-traps, etc. The word “absurd“ is not a magic wand that automatically refutes some fact you don’t like.
Allah: “Talk is cheap, Cousin YHWH! Get back to us when you have a single theocracy, let alone several like I have. And secular leftists in America and Western Europe, the world’s cultural elite, carry MY water and spit out yours even though the misogynistic, homophobic and racist violence undertaken in my name worldwide dwarfs what occurs in yours”.
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