Avoiding a Catastrophic War with Iran

By Nathaniel Batchelder, Director, Peace House Oklahoma City

Pray cooler heads will guide America in the dialogue and
decision-making over Iran’s position in the world.  Iran does not have
nuclear weapons, and there is no certain evidence that such a program
is under way.  Certainly Iran has the right to the peaceful use of
nuclear energy, and the interests of world peace demand that these
issues be resolved without military action that could launch a
catastrophic war.

Another war would destroy America’s painful recovery from the
indebtedness of two wars and the 2008 economic crash.  Gasoline prices
would probably go up another dollar per gallon.  The Iraq and
Afghanistan war’s final costs will exceed $2 trillion.  Some estimates
say $4 trillion, or even $6 trillion, including lifelong care for
veterans physically or emotionally disabled.

Iran has four times the population of Iraq, many times the military
capability, and would seek support from other nations like Russia and
China, possibly sparking an unpredictable regional war.

Political hawks and shock-jocks on talk radio condemn calls for
negotiations and dialogue to resolve such matters without military
action as weakness.  The U.S. spends as much on military preparedness
as the rest of the world combined, so no one can doubt America’s
capacity to wage war.  It is shocking that the theme song of one
national talk show host states, "We’ll put a boot up your ass, it’s
the American way."

The world does not find this amusing or appealing.

More than six thousand American families grieve the deaths of sons and
daughters in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.  More than 30,000
U.S. troops have been physically wounded in action, and untold numbers
have returned home emotionally and physically disabled.  Suicides of
war veterans each month exceed combat deaths.

Official estimates of some 100,000 deaths in Iraq and 20,000 in
Afghanistan are considered low by other calculations. The British
polling group Opinion Research Business (ORB) has estimated Iraqi
deaths at closer to one million, with some 5 million becoming
displaced refuges who are homeless or have left the country.

Many believe our wars in the Middle East are breeding resentments that
will last lifetimes.

War brings big profits to military contractors and oil companies that
simply raise their prices.  Everyone else pays dearly, in dollars,
lives and blood.

The people of Iran are not well served by having a bellicose posturing
leader in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Cowboy professions of toughness are
usually hot air, appealing to the pride of some, but are not helpful
to the interests’ of peace. The vast majority of humanity desperately
hopes for negotiated resolutions to political tensions to avoid war
and its deaths and destruction that ruin lives and wreck economies.

The United States must lead the world in calling for cooler rhetoric
and civil dialogue by all nations in the Iran discussion. Israel
particularly must relax its rhetoric, confident that its close
alliance with the United States and its own arsenal of some 600
nuclear weapons renders it a muscular regional power whose sovereignty
is unquestioned.

War truly is hell, as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan remind us
too well.  Let’s remember that the terrible attacks on America of
9/11, 2001, were not from a nation, but from an alliance of
individuals from many nations, most prominently Saudi Arabia.  The
U.S. attack on Iraq is now admittedly blamed on “faulty intelligence,”
misinformation and miscalculation.  Vice President Dick Cheney
predicted that the Iraq war would last six weeks and that U.S. forces
would be welcomed with flowers as liberators.

All Americans opposed to another war must stand behind leaders seeking
nonviolent resolutions to world situations that could blow up into
wars that would wreck our economy, raise oil prices, profit only a
few, and cause incalculable suffering everywhere, while we taxpayers
foot the bill.