Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
US president Donald Trump says that his war in Iran – currently in a supposed ceasefire – resulted in “total and complete victory. 100%. No question about it.” The Iranian regime, via a statement from its Supreme National Security Council, also claims “great victory.”
If the war is really over (I’m skeptical), who actually won?
Well, not you.
“You can no more win a war,” said Jeannette Rankin, “than you can win an earthquake.”
Rankin, the first woman ever elected to the US House of Representatives, entered Congress in 1916, just in time to vote against US entry into World War 1. Unseated in 1918, she managed a comeback in 1940, just in time to vote against US entry into World War 2.
We could use a few Jeannette Rankins these days.
Not so much to vote against going to war, though: Congress hasn’t bothered with that formality since 1942, leaving such decisions up to whatever emperor-in-all-but-name happens to occupy the White House and suddenly find himself in need of a distraction from the various domestic problems that presidents always get blamed for (and are sometimes actually to blame for).
The real function of a Jeanette Rankin or her equivalent is to remind us now and then of an immutable and irrefutable truth:
War is always a damaging and destructive thing.
Apart from a few politicians and generals who get to crow about “winning,” and some politically connected profiteers pre-positioned to knock down fat contracts at the expense of taxpayers, everyone, on all sides, loses.
Some – soldiers and civilian non-combatants alike – lose their lives or end up maimed or orphaned.
Others see their homes destroyed and are forced to flee to hopefully safer locations, sometimes never to return.
Even those far from the front and seemingly safe from shelling, aerial bombardment, or rocket attack find that their paychecks don’t go nearly as far and that some things just aren’t nearly as available at any price as during peacetime. I still have my mother’s World War 2 ration book. Fortunately, Americans haven’t suffered those levels of privation at any time since, but many people, in many places, have seen that and worse.
War may be, as Randolph Bourne said, “the health of the state,” but it’s all down side for regular people who just want to live their lives in peace and prosperity.
Here’s hoping that the Iran earthquake wasn’t just a foreshock, and that the aftershocks are minor. Support peace!
