Bombing Iran
How sad that war provokes such controversy.
Why can’t we just get on with it without
A bunch of angry nay-sayers? Lord-a-mercy!
“Give Peace a Chance!” “Make Love, Not War!” they shout
As if they think it’s 1969
Again. Same anti-war conspiracy
Except that now, instead of ‘Nam, they whine
About Iran and Trump’s autocracy.
Of course, they’re motivated more by hate
For Trump than love for Ayatollahs who,
Along with oil, controlled the Hormuz Straight
Until we blew them all to hell (Boo-hoo).
The point, of course, of all the shock and awe
Is to install a new (and pro-West) Shah.
James A. Tweedie is a retired pastor living in Long Beach, Washington. He has written and published six novels, one collection of short stories, and four collections of poetry including Sidekicks, Mostly Sonnets, and Laughing Matters, all with Dunecrest Press. His poems have been published nationally and internationally in both print and online media. He was honored with being chosen as the winner of the 2021 SCP International Poetry Competition.
James, this was a great poem, except for the ending. That may be the end result; however, the stated goal is democracy.
Roy,
I’m okay that you liked part of the poem and another part not so much. I am somewhat confused over the whole Iran scenario that is playing out before our eyes and my poem was intentionally written to collapse, consolidate, and kaleidoscope a number of conflicting thoughts and feelings into the 14 lines allowed by the sonnet form.
Personally, I don’t see much of a substantive difference between your end game and mine since the common hoped-for-goal of both is a pro-west regime.
The only way to get there is for large numbers of both the existing military and police—along with many others from each of the intertwined and semi-independent security branches—to effectively defect and submit to a leaderless and vacuously ill-defined pro-democracy movement and start killing each other since they are the only ones who have access to weapons in the country. Given the fanatical Shi’a adherence to apocalyptic doctrine I’m not readily convinced that this is likely to happen any time soon, no matter how much we degrade their military/defense/communications/control/command capabilities . . . Short of having boots on the ground along with street to street fighting of the sort Israel faced with the unrelenting, suicidal Hamas martyr-fanatics.
Israel’s stated aims in their assault on Iran are clear and measurable. Those thus far articulated by Trump and Hedgseth seem to be infused with strains of wishful thinking.
I do believe the attacks are justified and I hope and pray for a quick and positive outcome for our country, the Middle East as a whole and for the people of Iran in particular. Yet there are great risks that come with the sort of bold daring being played out on our TV, computer and cell phone screens.
I would like to think that the Persian/Iranian people are more reasonable and sophisticated than their surrogates in the Arab enclaves of Hamas and Hezballah. But, then again, I also recall that it was Irani fanatics who sent children into battle as canon fodder during their war with Iraq.
Time will tell and we shall see.
When I was assigned to an abbreviated three-letter organization, I sat in on a debriefing of a top-ranking official under the Shah who had escaped. I did not speak Farsi, but he spoke educated English. The Shah’s high-ranking official felt that Democratic U.S. President Jimmy Carter had let them down by failing to support them during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Carter Administration was trying to balance human rights with Cold War strategic interests with the aftermath leading to the hostage crisis in November of that same year and with Ayatollah Khomeini (not the just deposed Khamenei) establishing a theocracy. Iran, with the Shah, was understandably pro-western, especially from a geo-political standpoint. Today’s Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan, all of which were subjects of the Soviet Union, border Iran. After WWII, the Soviets intended to keep their own forces in Iran which had occupied the area but were pressured out by the other allies led by Great Britain and the United States.
Thank you, LTC Peterson. You have brought up a plain fact that Democrats would like to ignore. It was a Democrat President, Jimmy Carter, with the intense pressure of left-liberal ideologues in his own party, who made possible the overthrow of the Shah and the accession to power of the maniacal Shiite fanatics that now run the theocratic concentration camp known as Iran.
The Shah was our loyal ally, and with just a little help we could have kept him and his dynasty in power. But it was Carter, stupidly trying to “balance human rights with Cold War strategic interests” (as you say), who lost everything, and who thereby unleashed on the world the half-century horror of a theocratic Iran run by crackpots and jihadists.
That’s the kind of insanity that happens when you have a psalm-singing Sunday-School President who doesn’t understand Realpolitik, and whose mind is honeycombed with pious Categorical Imperatives about “human rights” and “democracy” and “international laws” and “peace” and “non-intervention.” Jimmy Carter is a solid argument for never electing a parson to the Presidency.
I’m sure that the top-ranking Iranian official of the Shah’s government whom you spoke with, LTC Peterson, was deeply embittered by Carter’s feckless and criminal inaction. The Shah was not the only loyal ally whom we have betrayed because of our stupid, moralistic, Puritan hangover.
I was a graduate student in Manhattan in 1978-79, and I personally witnessed the insane, moralistic freakishness of left-liberals and so-called “moderates” who screamed about how evil the Shah was, and how murderous his SAVAK intelligence service was, and how the holy man Khomeini was the only hope for a free and democratic Iran, and how his movement would lead to a new Middle East of brotherhood and peace (Yes, New York liberals really are that fatuous and clueless). These are the same idiots who thought that the Chinese Communists were just “agrarian reformers,” and that Fidel Castro was a “heroic revolutionary figure” like Washington and Bolivar.
We now have a real President who is fully conscious of Realpolitik. And his opponents are still whining about Categorical Imperatives and the demands of morality. Left-liberals and parsons never learn.
It seems so complicated, yet in some ways it is quite simple. Some people can’t face the reality that Iran’s leaders are getting a strong dose of reality. I’m glad my boots are not on that ground, and I’m glad that someone is lookin out for me.
A very witty and deft poem, James. It can never be good to want war, but it does seem as if sometimes it is an imperative, and furthermore, despite ‘international law’ – whatever that fungus is – that it is the right thing to do: doing the ‘right’ thing always trumps (no pun intended) the law. Why? Because to do the right thing means preventing a greater evil from blossoming, which would be wrong.
I recall that was a John McCain campaign song title in 2009 ;<)
Joseph, thanks for this well-written piece, and for your comments. How ironic that concern for human rights, of all things, stopped the Democrats from supporting the Shah! The many victims of the misery that the Ayatollahs have spread, both inside Iran and elsewhere, might manage a bitter smile (those of them who are still alive.)
Much the same thing is being played out in Britain now, with the alliance between the far left and Islamists. The former are treated as useful idiots, but they seem unable to realise it.