Americans Do Not Want Another War In The Middle East
The American people are fed up with regime change wars
The MAGA regime has engaged in preemptive illegal military strikes against Iran. This military assault has already killed hundreds of children at a girl’s school near Tehran, 6 American soldiers have been killed with dozens more severely injured, and approximately 40 Iranian leaders have been murdered including their Supreme Leader, their Defense Minister, and their National Security Council Secretary to name a few. This is the equivalent of a foreign authoritarian regime murdering our President, our Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and our Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in one strike over a weekend. This means war and the Iranian regime has the military resources and the allies (Russia & China) to instigate the beginnings of World War III.
Now that the Trump regime has waged yet another war in the Middle East we need to have an honest conversation about what this means for everyday American citizens. This is not about slogans and yet Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio speak in rehearsed catch phrases before every podium briefing. This is about American lives, American taxpayers, American priorities and I oppose this war.
The first protest I ever attended was in opposition to the War in Iraq. I was a 20-year-old college student, enrolled in a Moral Theology Course at a Catholic University in New Orleans. I knew it then, and Former Secretary of State Colin Powell later confirmed, that the United States Intelligence Agencies preyed upon America’s trauma surrounding 9/11 and knowingly misled Americans with faulty intelligence surrounding Iraq’s nuclear weapons program.
This Is Not the Job of American Soldiers
American servicemembers volunteer to defend this country and its interests. They do not enlist to be the enforcement arm of every geopolitical conflict across the globe. It would probably surprise many that I am unapologetically pro-military. If Iran had attacked the United States directly, I am America first… all the way. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Annihilate them and every regime that facilitates an attack on our country. But this conflict is about regional power struggles, historical grievances, and strategic dominance in the Middle East. So, the question becomes, why are American troops and American taxpayers expected to absorb the risk?
Every time we enter a foreign conflict, Americans are told that the conflict is necessary, essential, strategic, and/or a matter of national security. And without fail the bill comes due on the backs of the American people. We pay in coffins, in VA medical bills, in trillion-dollar deficits, in generational trauma, and instability to the American family unit.
Iranian Immigrants Need to Hear a Hard Truth
The Iranian theocratic regime is brutal, regressive, and one of the most aggressive perpetrators of human rights abuses on the planet. That fact isn’t deniable. I have two Facebook friends who are Iranian immigrants. I met them in New York City years ago during my residency, and they both happen to be highly successful, economically well-off physicians in the United States. I think it’s great that they are able to bring their professional talents and economic dreams to fruition in America. Both of them expressed joy and gratitude to the Trump regime and the American military for attacking the country of Iran and killing its leaders. But here’s an uncomfortable truth:
It is not the role of American citizens to put our lives on the line for your country’s freedom.
These 2 physicians both fled their country to come to the U.S., they live upper middle-class American lives, with all the freedoms that come with it, and they left the citizens of their country behind to languish under an oppressive regime. Yet somehow, they expect lower middle-class Americans to leave their families and risk their lives to fight for the freedom of the citizens they left behind. The nerve!
One of them is a neuropsychiatrist and the other a plastic surgeon. Neither one of them donate their time and talent to veterans with traumatic brain injury or amputees requiring reconstructive surgery. No, they both live comfortable lives in New York and California. And to be clear, I love that for them. They deserve all the goods and riches that come their way. But it takes a certain level of crassness to flee authoritarian rule, leave friends and family behind, live your best life in the U.S., and expect Americans to risk their lives for your country’s freedom. Nope!
If the Iranian people want freedom, they need to go and fight for it.
Why Don’t Y’all Listen to Black People?
In the United States, Black people lived under enslavement and varying degrees of apartheid for over 350 years. Black Americans didn’t have a country to escape to or a territory offering refuge from persecution. African Americans had to fight the country of their birth through the courts, through legislation, and even militarily to be considered human and not chattel, and for many other freedoms including the right to vote. That fight came with casualties; millions of them. The fight also didn’t begin and end over one news cycle or even one election cycle. It spanned four centuries. Some would say we are still in the fight. So, when Iranians say, but we’ve been living under this Islamic extremism since 1979! To that I say keep fighting. 45 years is a drop in the bucket. This fight could be centuries in the making.
America First Seems to Be Selective
We are constantly told that there is no money for health care, no money for food assistance and free lunch programs, no resources to address housing affordability and no money for middle-class income, property, gas and sales tax relief. But somehow, we can always find the money for military conflicts around the world. Defense contract approval moves faster through the gears of government than prescription drug reform ever will.
If we truly can’t afford domestic investments like, high-speed rail, upgrading to a 21st century energy grid, fortifying our nation’s cyber security, or advancing telecommunications to fiber-optic broadband, then we certainly cannot afford another open-ended military conflict in the Middle East.
War Has a Cost Beyond the Battlefield
The Trump regime has not deployed troops on the ground in Iran, but Secretary Hegseth has not ruled out a ground invasion. Despite no troops on the ground, as of today, we’ve already felt the consequences of this regime’s military escalation. Energy and oil prices are on the rise, retaliatory attacks are underway on our Middle Eastern allies, domestic cyber warfare, and regional instability that pulls us deeper into a conflict that in no way benefits the American people.
In the words of Colin Powell, “you break it you buy it”. And we’ve seen this movie before. What begins as a limited strike becomes a sustained long-term engagement. What is framed as deterrence often is offensive provocative military engagement. Conservative Republicans advocate for fiscal restraint at home and unlimited economic resources abroad for countries who don’t even share our values.
I Don’t Care about Conservative Opinions
I am no longer going to entertain the barrage of Conservative talking points that claim liberals who oppose America’s involvement in this military conflict, means we support the Ayatollah’s violent regime. These insults are distractions meant to purposely move the conversation away from the illegality of this war and the consequences incurred by the American people. Liberals do not support a theocratic regime on our shores, and we certainly don’t advocate for them abroad. If Iranian men and women decide they no longer want to live under theocratic rule, then they should take a page out the Black American playbook and fight for their freedoms their damn selves.