Hero

Bush's long reign of violence is set to continue, if the markers are accurate.

Once I would have dismissed claims of the United States invading Iran as fanciful stupidity. What would we stand to gain in relation to what we stand to lose in that arena? Conspiracy theorists have always talked about our orchestration of the invasions of other countries, sometimes with justification or proof but most often only with conjecture and that's how these claims would have been taken 5 years ago, or even 3 years ago.

Before the United States stepped into Iraq for the second Gulf War, I was sure of my convictions that the United States - no matter who was at the helm - would never violate the sovereignty of another nation without provocation. I always pointed at Gulf I where the invasion was prompted by Iraq's own invasion of Kuwait, an ally of ours. That was a war of liberation and it was fought for a good cause if any war can be. We stopped when the international community said to stop and we did what we could to curtail future military adventures by the Warlord of Baghdad.

After the towers fell, we rode into Afghanistan to take the fight to those most directly responsible. While debatable, the trail of evidence here seems solid and the expedition mostly successful.

All was still fine in my head. We hadn't overstepped propriety with regard to sovereignty or thumbed our nose at our allies and while we were rapidly losing our much-vaunted freedoms, our problems were internal.

That all changed when Bush's rhetoric became action and the military rolled into Iraq, not stopping until Baghdad - one of the most ancient and fantastic cities in the world - had fallen. Justification for the war, tenuous at best before it had launched, evaporated and turned into a manhunt for a dictator who had already been emasculated.

Suddenly, all pretense of America's greatness came crashing down. Certainly we are still unmatched on the battlefield (or is it merely that we fight only those we know we can beat?) but where we once enjoyed the sanctity of our beliefs in democracy and justice there stood instead a hegemonic and dictatorial aggressor piloted by a sub-literate ape with a conqueror fetish.

It is clear now that George Bush Jr. desires little more than to pave his way to history in the blood of hyperbolic enemies. Like his father, he speaks in terms of good and evil, right and wrong, but unlike his father he has no grasp on the realities of the world.

Indeed, his own father uttered this oft-overlooked phrase:

"To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day hero ... assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an un-winnable urban guerilla war. It could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability."

It is a comment he has ignored with the tenacity of a teenager set on defying his father just to prove his independence. He has steadfastly ignored his failing public approval, educated criticisms, international censure, and his father's advice to set out on escapades that risk not his life, but the lives of others for his own self-aggrandizement.

To characterize any of the moves he's made since the invasion of Afghanistan as anything but selfish and personal is ridiculous in the extreme. He personalized the invasion of Iraq while also couching it in terms of non-existent terrorism and at the same time, set the stage for future developments when he made his infantile 'Axis of Evil' comments. Comments that included, not accidentally, Iran.

Prior to all this craziness in the Middle East, my only exposure to Iran had been the hostage crisis during Carter's tenure while I was a child, and a girl I knew in high school who was an Iranian immigrant. I looked at Iran a lot like Russia at the time and I only wondered why they hated America so much. I harbored no ill-will than I can recall. The girl was another story entirely. She was pretty, smart, friendly and really American. Yet, she was also proudly Iranian and did a lot to educate me.

When I separated from the Air Force, I met a man who had spent his teenage years in Iran with his father who moved there for work. He did even more to show me the budding progressive liberal movements that existed there, and during the 90s I watched the country fairly often to see what was happening.

So for me, Iran has never been an evil nation, rather one that needs ideological and political support, not condemnation or criminalization, actions that only serve to lend them ammunition for rhetoric, justification for conservatism.

Part of being an adult is recognizing that others are going to disagree with you and finding ways to cope that don't involve a fist. You quickly learn that violence is a path rewarded only with more violence and that to resort to it means you have become incapable of operating or competing in the arenas of discourse and debate.

In terms of nations, fists become armies. Like fists, armies don't change minds or hearts. Like fists, armies encourage more of the same. In the end all we are left with is pain and blood.

An invasion of Iran will certainly make the primate in office feel quite masculine. After all, he is rapidly becoming one of the most successful conquerors of the modern world and there's little to hold him back with his one re-election under his belt. He can retire from office and say to himself, "I have secured the United States from foreign aggression and protected the people of this great nation. I have driven back the terrorists and defended the freedoms of America and the free world. I have conquered where my father failed. I am a great hero to this nation."

In every case he will be wrong and the rest of us will pay the price of his arrogance for years to come.


Check out what Iranian Americans are doing to prevent war with Iran: Iranian-Americans and a War on Iran.