By Samantha Berkhead
News editor
The tension has built up gradually during several months, and noticing it has become as easy as opening to the international section of a newspaper. In the last three months alone, The New York Times has printed more than 32 stories that foreshadow it, according to dawn.com.
The United States and Israel have repeatedly threatened Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program. If Iran doesn’t do so, they say, a pre-emptive armed strike on the country’s existing nuclear facilities will be necessary. On Feb. 2, The Washington Post reported U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta believes Israel could strike Iran as early as April.
There’s just one problem with the U.S. and Israel’s reasoning.
Iran doesn’t even have nuclear weapons. It has, in fact, repeatedly described the expansion of its weapons program as peaceful.
According to a March 8 CNN article, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, has recently repeated that producing nuclear weaponry is not only “un-Islamic,” but also emphasized that Iran will not pursue the manufacture of these weapons.
Israel, in the meantime, still stands as one of the four nuclear countries in the world that haven’t signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Economist has stated Israel has has the highest ratio of defense spending to gross domestic product in the world.
Sensing a discrepancy yet?
American and Israeli leaders need to ignore the ever-louder cries for war around them and take the less-popular course of action — to pursue peace with Iran through open negotiation for it. Not only that, but a mass movement against war must happen for the sake of each country involved.
Iran’s leaders have a justified reason to want to expand their military. A Forbes article states that since as early as 2010, the U.S. and Israel have been building up forces in the Persian Gulf, threatening Iran from its doorstep.
It was a marked change from when President Obama took office in 2009. In his inaugural address, Obama offered a hand of solidarity to the Muslim world.
“We seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect,” he said. “To those leaders around the globe who seek to sew conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”
At this point, pointing the finger at one country or the other to assign blame for what went wrong during the last three years won’t solve anything.
Iran lies between two countries ravaged by irresponsible American militarism. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have crippled those nations during the last decade, and the U.S. continues to uphold a military presence in Afghanistan.
On Oct. 22, 2010, ABC News reported on “a secret U.S. government tally that puts the Iraqi (civilian) death toll over 100,000,” yet some reports estimate the civilian death toll at more than 600,000. The country now suffers from conflict caused by religious, ethnic and sectarian divisions. American forces have failed to provide the Iraqi population with security or basic needs, let alone any semblance of reconstruction before all troops withdrew Dec. 18.
Afghanistan’s people have been essentially decimated by American armed intervention as well. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported Afghanistan has the highest infant-mortality rate in the world – 257 deaths per 1,000 live births. Seventy percent of the population doesn’t have clean water access, the agency said. Between the Taliban, al-Qaeda and American troops, countless human-rights violations have been performed on civilians.
President Obama has stated all U.S. troops will be out of Afghanistan by 2014, but by then Afghanistan may be beyond repair.
If America and Israel pursue war with Iran, nothing would be achieved besides the destruction of a society that doesn’t deserve it. Billions of taxpayer dollars will be wasted, thousands of American soldiers will be killed and the rest of the world will see America as what it will have become: a warmongering people more bent on winning armed conflicts than actually helping the world become a better place.
America may have the largest military in the world, but just because we can go to war doesn’t mean we should.
At the very least, your gas prices depend on it.
berkhesj10@bonaventure.edu
