On Invading Iran (Guest Column)

Guest column by DJ Razza:

I get sick every time we get ready to invade another Muslim country. This occurs at a pre-rational level. Even before I can verbalise all the arguments for or against invading, the thought of all those bombs dropping on all those children makes me nauseous.

My aunts, uncles, cousins - almost my entire family - are Muslims. They're not terrorists or mullahs or crazy people excited about murdering Americans. Yet this is what our media tell us about every person in "those countries" whenever we get ready to invade one. Even if they don't use those exact words to paint "all Mozzlims" as evil (and frequently, they do), this is the perception they give. How do I know? Because when I talk to my fellow Americans, the ones who consume television news and read the papers, these are their ideas.

As a reader letter published in TIME magazine once said, "In countries like that [Afghanistan and Sudan] there is no such thing as an innocent civilian."

No matter how much you try to explain to Americans that innocent people will die, innocent people who love freedom and honesty and decency as much you do, they simply will not get it. They will either counter with pseudoscholarly arguments like, "Islam is not compatible with democracy," or "Those people want to die for Allah, let's give 'em their wish!" or will give lip service to feeling sorry for the "collateral damage" caused by a very necessary and very just American invasion. (Only in the United States are dark-skinned human beings who live in foreign countries referred to as "collateral".)

The truth is, however, if one truly felt sorry about the "collateral damage" caused by our invasions, which perforce will exceed the "intended damage" on "military targets", then one would not invade in the first place. Britain never carpet-bombed Northern Ireland even when she was subjected to horrendous terrorist bombings, for the simple reason that the British, however much they disagreed with the politics and methods of the terrorists they could not bear to lay waste to an entire country, even though the broad majority of that country morally and materially suppoted the terrorists. No doubt they had no qualms laying waste to entire continents (Africa, the Indian Subcontinent) but Britons felt too much empathy for the Irish people, had too much contact with them, knew them too well, to be able to bomb them back to the Stone Age at the end of the 20th century.

If Americans really felt even the slightest empathy for "Eye-rackis" or "Eye-rain-ians" - and most will tell you frankly that they never have and never will (popular U.S. commentator Bill O'Reilly calls Iraqis "a primitive people" who are too stupid and ungrateful to take full advantage of the blessing of America's destroying their country) - they would not have the stomach to invade and bomb and rape 13-year-old girls. They would feel nauseous at the thought of it.