Fireworks for America are a metaphor for freedom. After all, it takes a great deal of explosive power to free a people from a tyrant. Dropping fourteen 15-ton bunker busters from B-2 bombers on Iran’s three nuclear enrichment program sites may have just spared the lives of 58,000 U.S. military personnel from the despotism of the ayatollah, but also provided a little encouragement to the 90 million Iranian people now enslaved to him. By the way, 58,000 is the number of fatal casualties sustained by U.S. military personnel while in Vietnam. Talk about fireworks! Thank you, President Trump.
Recently, President Trump compared the importance of his bombing decision to the WWII, war-ending nuclear bombings of Japan. And despite the outrage, he is probably right. One of the key reasons President Harry Truman ordered the two nuclear strikes on Japan in WWII was to avoid the over one million estimated U.S. casualties it would require to invade. The estimate was based on the brutal one-in-three casualty rates sustained at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
And while it would be disrespectful to those military men that “gave the last full measure of devotion,” keeping the murderous Axis forces of fascism and communism at bay in the 20th Century, the unrest in the Middle East as well as recent U.S. intervention is nonetheless a pivotal scene on the geopolitical theatre just as critical as Vietnam.
America’s war in Vietnam was a win for the global nation-state system in Asia. Many misinterpreted the conflict in Vietnam as an American defeat. It certainly was a hard sacrifice for the U.S., a weeping wound which our culture still nurses. But that sacrifice gave room for fledgling new Asian states to develop unmolested by the unsatiable appetite of communism gobbling up control of the global map.
America’s willingness for Asian warfare in the 1950s and 60s, many like the late Charles Hill believe, paved the way for the economic “Asian Tigers,” Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, and Hong Kong. In addition, while the communists were distracted with Vietnam, there grew Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia. And once these new nation-states declared their sovereignty and other democratic nation-states accepted them into the Allied ranks, they were less likely to be attacked and more resilient to the threats and propaganda of communist empire builders.
The result of America’s conflict with Vietnam is 40 years of relative Asian political and economic stability. The world, and especially the people of Asia outside of China, owe an unpayable debt to the brave American soldier of Vietnam who often had to fight in blind faith, many of whom never understood or died never to see the far-reaching implications of peace and prosperity forged in that jungle furnace.
Not for nothing, like Vietnam, the Iranian Islamic regime is being supported by the largest communist conglomerate in the world, Maoist China and Marxist Russia. The virus of communism is attempting to maintain Islamic instability in the Middle Eastern region of the world by blocking any more infusions of democratic nation-statehood, the real antidote to the political disease that is communism. And now, as then, a Marxist virus is infecting the U.S. as manifested through Antifa, not unlike the Marxist Black Panthers and New Left Vietnam-war protestors like Hanoi Jane Fonda in the 60s.
And since over 80% of Iranians want to be out from under the oppressive boot of Ayatollah’s self-proclaimed “supreme leadership,” preferring instead to join the ranks of democratic nation-states represented by their neighbor, Israel, and buttressed by the United States, it stands to reason that aspirations of a communism would be threatened.
Israel’s conflict with Iran is the global flashpoint of the evil Axis powers of communism rising up against the Allied forces of the global fellowship of free democratic nation-states. Benjamin Netanyahu when speaking about the brutal Hamas terror attacks, likely backed by the Iranian Islamic regime, was right, “It’s the Battle of civilization against barbarism. And if we don’t win here, the scourge will pass [from] the Middle East to other regions.”
The sentiment of the Iranian people could very well be the key to open the gate to a pathway of relief from the chronic Middle Eastern strife. So, it behooves Israel, America, and the future peace of all peoples in the Middle East and the world, to keep fighting. Overthrow Iran’s murderous Islamic oppressor Ayatollah Khamenei so that the people of Iran, like U.S. patriots on July 4, 1776, can declare their sovereign existence as a nation, with the unalienable right to life for each person.
As Americans fighting for global security, and Iranians who yearn for freedom, it may be helpful to recall the words of John Stuart Mill, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things… A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
Rev. Jim Harden, M.Div. is the CEO of CompassCare Pregnancy Services and lives outside of Rochester, NY with his wife and ten children. He has written extensively on medical ethics, executive leadership, and pro-life strategy. www.CompassCareCommunity.com
Image: National Archives