Recently, both online and in person, I’ve seen a great deal of people express their opposition to the war on Iran, as well as their opposition to the Iranian government. I’ve seen people celebrate the death of Khamenei as well as mourn the murder of over 175 people, mostly schoolgirls, in an American missile attack on a primary school. It appears that a statement condemning Israel and America’s war on Iran must have three things: a verb, a noun, and a condemnation of the Iranian government. And I am begging those who consider themselves anti-war to stop doing this.
Statements expressing hope that a democratic Iranian phoenix will rise from the ashes of Tehran are particularly troublesome, precisely because of how banal they appear. Of course it would be nice if Iran became a democracy with a good human rights record. I doubt anyone anti-war would contest that, however it’s entirely irrelevant to the situation Iranians are facing. Pigs will fly before liberal democracy is given to a people through a carpet-bombing campaign.
Similarly, coupling this with a focus on how there is barely even a pretense of humanitarian intervention from the Israelis and Americans, and how that is clearly not the goal of the war, is not helpful. Iraq and Afghanistan were both framed as humanitarian interventions, and they both had enormous costs for the people of the countries that America and her allies destroyed. It implies that if the war was conducted for and in a manner corresponding with a humanitarian intervention, it would be justified.
Constant condemnation of the Iranian government is a massive own goal. It’s understandable why people may think opposition to the Iranian government and the war is an acceptable position, before you think about it for more than a few seconds or apply it to any other situation. If you hold this view I want you to seriously ask yourself, would you say “I oppose Germany’s invasion of Poland, but I shed no tears about the collapse of the Sanation regime?” Probably not, because it would make you sound like a Nazi.
Saying that the Iranian government needs to go, that it’s illegitimate, and the Iranian people need a liberal democracy in the style of Britain or France, but that America and Israel are wrong for conducting a war in an attempt to destroy this government is a very weak position to hold. It makes you sound pathetic. You are essentially saying the government has to go, but that Israel and America were wrong to take the action to achieve the outcome you want, or that if they hadn’t gone so overboard with such wanton murder it would be alright. This is not an anti-war position.
“Crowd” by DavidMartynHunt is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
