Tag: Iran

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Against Warmongering

Fresno Bee, June 23, 2025

The warmongers are at it again: Bombs are falling on foreign cities; politicians are being assassinated; tanks are paraded through Washington; and troops are “liberating” Los Angeles.

“Game on,” Senator Lindsey Graham said, cheering the prospect of going “all-in” against Iran. Warmongers see a world of enemies engaged in constant battle. They imagine it is easy to achieve “unconditional surrender,” to quote President Donald Trump’s ultimatum to Iran.

The militaristic mindset explains the Trumpian call to “liberate” Los Angeles from “the socialists,” as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem put it last week. As troops were deployed to L.A., the president told the soldiers under his command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina that the riots in Los Angeles were an assault on “national sovereignty.”

This aggressive language is a prelude to moral disaster. Moral judgment about the use of force requires careful deliberation informed by the wisdom of the world’s traditions, most of which teach us to turn the other cheek and love our enemies. If violence is ever justified, it should emerge as a last resort from out of a background commitment to nonviolence.

But that’s not how warmongering works. Rather than making arguments grounded in patience, love and justice, the warmonger rants and raves. And, indeed, that is the way war works. Violence is dumb, inarticulate and morally mute. It kills and disables. But it makes no arguments — it does not convert or convince, it only destroys.

Violence is seductive because it is spectacular. It is quick, loud, decisive and even fun. Bullies and abusers enjoy what they do. Otherwise, they wouldn’t do it. Some sinister part of human nature likes to blow stuff up. Sigmund Freud called this the death drive. He saw a key challenge of psychological development as learning to transform cruelty into something better. Civilization develops as we learn to sublimate aggression.

Moral development should lead beyond cruelty, rage and revenge. Retributivism is a step in that direction: Rather than simply lashing out in blind fury, retributive justice tells us to apply violence in measured doses according to the old recipe of an eye for an eye, or a life for a life. The retributive scheme is meant to moderate rage. It sets a limit on violence.

It was in response to the old law of “eye-for-an-eye” justice that Jesus said we should turn the other cheek and love our enemies. Christian pacifism emerged in the ancient world following this ideal. But some Christians argued that there was a right to kill in self-defense — and especially in defense of others. The “just war theory” developed, allowing defensive war as a reluctant last resort. The elaborate edifice of the just war theory aims to limit warfare and minimize bloodshed in pursuit of just causes.

In my own scholarship on this topic, I have argued that just war is much easier to describe in theory than to carry out in practice. The “fog of war” makes it difficult to master events, to predict outcomes and to ensure compliance with moral principles. Another problem is “the just war myth,” a wishful idealism that thinks it is easy to fight a just war, and that “the good guys” win because they are good.

The warmongers ignore these difficulties. They are “all-in” on war. Perhaps they think war is like a movie or a video game where widows and orphans never appear on screen. Or perhaps they are really just cruel and aggressive.

In reality, very few wars live up to the moral ideal. Good people die. Bad guys sometimes win. Atrocities are committed. And noble soldiers suffer post-traumatic stress disorder and moral injury.

Our culture inclines us to ignore all of this. Parades do not show off the injuries or the trauma. Films and video games make violence seem exciting. And warmongering makes war appear easy to justify.

As soldiers deploy on American streets and bombs rain down on foreign cities, we need to think more carefully about the justification of war. We also need to listen carefully to the critics of war, whose voices are often drowned out by the warmonger’s ranting. Cruelty and war are ancient maladies. But the argument against violence is as old as Jesus who advised us to love our enemies and turn the other cheek.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article309092545.html#storylink=cpy

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Religious Liberty, Modesty, and The Morality Police

Fresno Bee, October 2, 2022

Morality is not external conformity. Let’s keep this in mind when thinking about recent protests in Iran against the “morality police.” Those protests broke out in response to the death of Mahsa Amini, a woman who died after being detained by the morality police for wearing her hijab (a head covering) too loosely.

For Americans of the present generation, the notion of the morality police is hard to fathom. How strange that anyone cares whether women cover their hair.

Of course, societies have often attempted to control women’s lives, bodies, and sexuality. A hundred years ago in the United States, swimsuit police tried to prevent women from showing too much skin at the beach.

We’ve come a long way. Thanks to the secular principles found in the First Amendment, we are free to wear what we want. There is no morality police here because we view fashion as a form of free expression.

There are limits, of course. Schoolchildren are not free to wear pornographic or offensive T-shirts. Nudity is prohibited. And in a recent case out of Everett, Washington, the courts upheld a law prohibiting baristas at the Bikini Hut coffee shop from dressing like strippers. The Ninth Circuit Court drew a line at “pasties and a G-string” with your coffee.

But beyond those limits, our secular system holds that fashion, sex, and sexuality are private matters, not subject to policing. This is the result of a long struggle against a more restrictive worldview. And some Americans might prefer a return to modesty and conformity. Until recently, school districts prohibited girls from wearing tight leggings or yoga pants — including here in Clovis, which only changed its policy this year.

So, let’s not take the struggle for liberty and privacy for granted. It’s only been about 20 years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned laws against sodomy, in Lawrence v. Texas. It’s only been seven years since Obergefell v. Hodges gave same sex couples the right to marry. And challenges remain. The court has called the idea of a “right to privacy” into question with the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade earlier this year.

Behind these legal issues is a basic argument about the importance of liberty. This is related to a claim about the futility and absurdity of trying to police fashion, sex, and modesty.

Americans pledge allegiance to the idea of a country founded on the idea of liberty and justice for all. Liberty means that you can wear a hijab or a bikini. The choice is up to you.

And if I don’t like your choice, I can choose not to look. We forget this important point with regard to modesty. Rather than worrying about women flaunting their bodies, why don’t we insist that men stop ogling them?

There is no doubt that state power can dominate people. But police power does not actually create modesty or virtue. It is futile to use police power to enforce external conformity to norms of fashion, virtue, and modesty.

Clothing and hairstyles have nothing to do with the content of your character. It’s what’s inside your head and your heart that counts, not what you wear on the outside. That’s why the idea of fashion police is absurd. It is a meaningless exercise in enforcing conformity that is only skin deep.

Morality is simply not the kind of thing that results from the application of external force. The way to make people moral is to educate them, not to beat them into compliance. External force is useful for animals. We fence them in and leash them. But that’s not how you treat human beings.

Arresting people for what they wear (or don’t wear) also breeds discontent and further nonconformity. Women protested against the swimsuit police in the United States a hundred years ago. They are pushing the limit in the case of bikini baristas. And in Iran, women are burning their hijabs.

To force human beings to conform to some standard of modesty is degrading and ineffective. Secular systems of law respect our freedom to decide for ourselves about what we believe about modesty and how we adorn our bodies. This approach is respectful of our humanity, our rationality and our liberty.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article266575386.html#storylink=cpy

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Wrong to Bomb Cultural Targets: Trump Threatens War Crimes against Iran

Fresno Bee, January 12, 2020

It is good that tensions with Iran have cooled for the moment. But the heated rhetoric of the past week shows a moral deficit in our thinking about war.

The president threatened to destroy cultural targets in Iran if it retaliated for the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. President Trump threatened, in his words, “disproportionate” violence in response to Iranian retaliation. He explained, “They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn’t work that way.”

But morality does indeed work that way. The enemy is not “allowed” to do these things. We should rightly condemn them for it. And we must understand that it is immoral to return evil for evil.

Proportionality is key. The law of retaliation says you may demand eye for eye, and life for life. But justice says you can cannot demand more. To threaten disproportionate violence and escalation is immoral.

A higher, more humane morality goes beyond retaliation. Humanitarian morality calls upon us to give mercy to our enemies with the goal of restoring peace.

So-called “realists” reject this. They say anything goes in war, so long as it is effective and you can get away with it. But the “just war theory” developed over the past millennia, which calls for moral restraint in war.

The just war theory has roots in ancient Greek, Roman, and Christian sources. These ideas are woven into contemporary international treaties and conventions governing the laws of war. These ideas were used by Americans to prosecute war crimes after the Second World War. Until recently, the United States was a leading proponent of these ideas.

The just war theory prohibits disproportionate violence. It seeks to avoid the escalation of tit-for-tat reprisals. It prohibits torture and abuse of prisoners. It rejects deliberate attacks on innocent civilians and on cultural heritage sites.

Realists reject all of this. They see war as a matter of power. If you win, you do what you want. And if you lose, well, judgment does not matter to the dead.

The realist view of war is immoral and too narrow. All wars end. Soldiers return to civilian life. Communities are rebuilt. And history will render judgment after war.

Thousands of years ago, the Greek historian Polybius condemned the wanton destruction of temples and statues in a war led by Philip V. The historian said this was how frenzied tyrants fight. Good men do not make war with the goal of destruction and annihilation, he said. Rather, good men wage war in order to reform evil and create justice. Tyrants are ruthless and cruel. Good rulers earn people’s love with humanity and beneficence.

Future historians will judge our country’s actions as either tyrannical or benevolent. But judgment also occurs in the short-term among soldiers and those who love them. When soldiers are asked to behave immorally, they suffer from moral injury.

The soldiers who would be asked to carry out immoral orders are our students, friends, and loved ones. These are human beings with consciences. It would be wrong to ask them to violate morality by delivering disproportional harm or by destroying cultural heritage sites. Soldiers come home from war. We should want them to come home whole and morally intact.

It would, of course, be better if there were no wars at all. But an important step in the direction of peace is to understand the need for moral restraint in war. As Augustine said in a passage quoted with approval by Thomas Aquinas, “we go to war that we may have peace. Be peaceful, therefore, in warring, so that you may vanquish those whom you war against, and bring them to the prosperity of peace.”

Moral restraint in war helps to create a just and lasting peace. Cruelty creates hatred, enmity, and escalating violence. Tyrants ignore this to their peril. So let’s encourage our leaders to learn the lessons of the just war theory. And let’s hope they cherish the moral integrity of the soldiers they command and that they consider the judgment that history will render.