-Part IV-

The Forever War on Iran

“We’re going to take out seven countries
in five years. Starting with Iraq,
then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia,
Sudan and then finishing off with Iran.”

General Wesley Clark quoting a Pentagon Memo from September 2001.

The truth we’re striving to illustrate is this: neither of our two political parties which are supposed to represent us (not lead us) in Washington, DC truly care about us or have the interests of we the people in their hearts and minds, for both parties in our country have long been corrupted and bought out by the same corporate owners. Partisanship is a lie and an illusion intended to distract us from this truth and to keep our nation divided.

The point is this: it is the US Empire that is leading us toward yet another war in the Middle East. It is the US Empire that has been waging a war on Iran for the past four decades; it is the US Empire that desires to either bring Iran into its fold of control or else destroy Iran; it is the US Empire and its twin barbaric allies in the Middle East—Saudi Arabia and Israel—that alone stand to benefit from a war with Iran, not the Republic of these united states and surely not We the People.

Our country, the Republic of the United States of America, has nothing to profit from a war with Iran. A war on Iran is immoral, illegal, unjust and wrong. If we devote even a single day of our lives to learning about the decades-long history between the United States and Iran we will learn the heartbreaking and tragic truth that of all the nations in the Middle East perhaps none is better fit to be our friend and ally in the region than Iran.

The Fight for Freedom
& Independence in Iran

“Yes, my sin—my greater sin and even my greatest sin—is that I
nationalized Iran’s oil industry and discarded the system of political
and economic exploitation by the world’s greatest empire.
With God’s blessing and the will of the people, I fought this savage
and dreadful system of international espionage and colonialism.“

Prime Minister of Iran, Doctor Mohammad Mosaddegh,
defending himself against a charge of treason, December 19, 1953.

The Iranian people do indeed want freedom and democracy, for they once had freedom and democracy. The Iranian people have been working toward and fighting for their own freedom and democracy, independence and sovereignty for over a century. It was formerly the British and now the US Empire that has crushed freedom, democracy and independence in Iran.

It is the District of Columbia and their international banking cabal in New York City and the City of London that does not want the Iranian people to be free and independent of their rule and it is Tel Aviv that is calling for the death of Iran and that in its duplicity is driving Washington toward yet another war of aggression in the Middle East.

The Iranian people want friendship with the American people. Iran admires America and American values and many Iranians like and respect Americans. What Iranians oppose is American militarism and US imperialism in West Asia. What Iranians challenge are the belligerent politics of Washington, DC. What the Iranian people do not want are US bombs falling on their houses and homes and US sanctions devastating their economy and country and crushing their civilization.

Make no mistake about it: sanctions are savage to the teeth. Sanctions are economic warfare. Sanctions are siege warfare. Sanctions hurt civilians and kill innocent people, including women, children, infants, the sick and old. Sanctions are as vicious, cruel, unjust and immoral as wars of aggression are. US unilateral sanctions are illicit and illegal under international law, and they are perpetrated with the premeditated purpose of inspiring chaos and inflicting ruin among the civilian populace.

A Brief History of Iran &
A Celebration of Persian Civilization

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.
Be drunk with love, for Love is all that exists.”

Rumi

The history of Iran is the history of human civilization. The history of Iran is one of the world’s great stories and one of the greatest tales ever told. Spanning five thousand years, the history of Iran begins with the Elamites and the Medes, moves to the Achaemenids and the rise of the Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great, includes invasions by Alexander the Great, the Arabs, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane and influence from Europe and Asia, partakes in the glory of the Silk Road, experiences a Constitutional Revolution, finds itself again caught up in the Great Games of the British and Russian Empires, endures both World Wars, survives a coup by the new imperial power on the block and wages an Islamic Revolution in its wake in the late 20th century, before fighting a brutal war with Iraq and fending off a fresh invasion by Saddam Hussein, while all the time, through all the centuries and ages, invasions and attempted conquests and coups, maintaining its great Persian civilization and rich culture and its modern nationhood as Iran.

And to Iranian civilization human civilization owes much of what we love and celebrate today. Iranian inventions and discoveries include: postal service, refrigeration, algebra, sulfuric acid, the guitar, advancements in modern medicine, the bazaar, polo, batteries, backgammon and chess, kerosene lamps, wind towers and wind mills, water irrigation, alcohol, animation, the world’s first monotheistic religion and the concept of human rights.

And poetry, poetry, poetry. Perhaps above all else, for us lovers of literature, of language, of songs and silences, beauty, aesthetic wisdom and ecstatic words aspiring toward the sublime and inspiring wonder in the heart, Iran has given us, the human race, poetry. Persia’s poetry is among the finest on earth and the most sublime under the sun.

In short: Persian civilization has been one of the world’s greatest from the beginning, and humanity owes a mighty debt to Iran and Iranian civilization.

For the purposes of this essay, we’re concerned with the history of modern Iran, from 1953 to today, and with Iran’s relations with England and the United States.

A Coup d’état in Tehran

“As zealots in Washington intensify their preparations for
an American attack on Iran, the story of the CIA’s 1953 coup,
with its many cautionary lessons, is more urgent relevantly than ever.
All the Shah’s Men brings to life the cloak-and-dagger operation
that deposed the only democratic government Iran ever had.”

from All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror,
by Stephen Kinzer.

The short story is this: in 1953, at the behest of the British, the CIA led a coup that overthrew the democratically-elected government of Iran. Doctor Mohammad Mosaddegh was the Prime Minister of Iran, a leader beloved by his people and regarded by many Iranians as the foremost champion of secular democracy and resistance to foreign domination in Iran’s modern history. He has been compared to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Mohandas Gandhi in his commitment to his country, his love for liberty and his courageous fight against British imperialism.

In his personal virtue, his compassion and integrity, his humbleness and kindness, and in his eloquence as a national leader, public speaker, doctor of philosophy and a well-educated intellectual, Mohammad Mosaddegh may in fact surpass these men.

In 1952, a year before the US’s coup, Time Magazine named Mohammad Mosaddegh the “Man of the Year” for 1951. In fact, this was actually Time’s second cover story and feature of the Iranian Prime Minister. In an article from June 1951, entitled, “Challenge of the East,” Time dubbed Mohammad Mosaddegh “The New Menace” and regarded him as merely the most prominent embodiment of a movement toward independence in the third world which they believed presented a “fundamental moral challenge” to the United States and the west.

Along with the growing nationalist movement in Iran, perhaps Time had the rising nationalist movement in Vietnam in mind. But the question remains: what was the Iranian Prime Minister’s great sin that so earned him the ire of England and the imperial west?

Oil and Imperialism,
Power and Hegemony

Prime Minister Mosaddegh’s crime was that in March of 1951 he helped to nationalize Iran’s oil industry. Through nationalization, Prime Minister Mosaddegh and Parliament ensured that the profits of Iran’s oil would now benefit, first and foremost, the nation of Iran and the Iranian people. This was deemed unacceptable, however, by the British Crown.

Up until 1951, Britain had controlled Iran’s oil industry and its profits through its Anglo-Persian Oil Company, allowing Iran ten percent of its own oil revenue, while reserving ninety percent of profits for itself and England. So, once again, we see that much of the conflict in the modern Middle East has its roots in oil and imperialism, in power and hegemony, the old usual suspects forever at play in the geopolitics of West Asia.

When Winston Churchill and the British failed to oust Prime Minster Mosaddegh and carry out their own coup, they enlisted the help of their Anglo ally, the United States, and its newly-minted Central Intelligence Agency. Into the fray came Kermit Roosevelt in the fateful Summer of 1953, and the rest, as they say, is history.

All the Shah’s Men and Overthrow
Remain as Relevant As Ever at the Dawn of 2020

“A fast-paced narrative history of the coups, revolutions, and invasions by
which the United States has toppled fourteen foreign governments—
not always to its own benefit. “Regime change” did not begin with the
administration of George W. Bush, but has been an integral part of U.S.
foreign policy for more than one hundred years. Starting with the overthrow
of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and continuing through the Spanish-
American War and the Cold War and into our own time, the United States has
not hesitated to overthrow governments that stood in the way of its political
and economic goals. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 is the latest, though perhaps
not the last, example of the dangers inherent in these operations.”

from Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq,
by Stephen Kinzer.

The story of Washington’s 1953 coup in Iran is an extraordinary one, reading at times like a spy-thriller. If you’re interested in learning this important story in its full narrative depth and human detail, a story too few Americans still know, and one which may transform your view of modern Iran, giving you a fresh perspective and a greater empathy for the nation, Stephen Kinzer’s All the Shah’s Men is perhaps the definite book on the subject.

I’ve been reading it since January, and it is indeed a remarkable book about a remarkable country and truly remarkable man, Mohammad Mosaddegh. A book and a story that remain as relevant today, in early 2020, as ever.

After reading All the Shah’s Men and learning about the US’s first coup détat abroad, and one of its most successful, you can continue with your studies and read Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrow, which chronicles America’s century of regime change, from Hawaii to Iraq. It is as important and compelling a read as All the Shah’s Men, and as vital to understanding the modern history of our country as Howard Zinn’s landmark A People’s History of the United States is vital to understanding the full scope and scale of American history, from 1492 to the present.

If you’re interested in gaining insight into life in modern day Iran, the book to check out is Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran by Medea Benjamin. Medea, a veteran peace activist, has traveled to Iran many times. You can follow and support her work at CODEPINK.org.

The Roots of Iranian-American Conflict

“The coup ushered in a quarter-century of repressive rule under the Shah,
stimulated the rise of Muslim fundamentalism and anti-Americanism through
the Middle East, and exposed the folly of using violence to try to reshape Iran.
All the Shah’s Men is essential reading if you want to place the American
invasion of Iraq in context and prepare for what comes next.”

from All the Shah’s Men, by Stephen Kinzer.

The roots of conflict between the United States and Iran today date to 1953 and the CIA’s coup in Tehran. Out of this coup comes the long, terrible, hateful reign of the Shah. From the US-backed Shah’s brutal reign and regime came the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the Iranian Hostage Crisis that so shocked, enraged and embarrassed the US from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981. And from the Hostage Crisis and the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 come much of the bad blood that has endured between the United States and Iran for the past forty years.

In this way, we see, yet again, the often nasty chain of cause-and-effect and the unintended consequences of US violence and US overthrew of sovereign states in the Middle East. Sectarianism does not spark war, we’ve realized. War spawns sectarianism.

Let Iran and Iranians take responsibility for what Iran and Iranians can take responsibility. But as Americans, we must also take responsibility for what we can take. We’re all adults. It’s long past time that we begin acting as adults and as moral and mature, enlightened individuals. The overthrow of Iran’s democratic government in 1953 by Washington is surely a pivotal moment in the history of our nations’ relations, and it’s a violent, unlawful and unjust act which we need to fully own up to and reckon with as Americans.

Reckoning With Our Violent History
& Facing Up to the Reality of American Brutality

“See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt.
He stokes the scullery fire… He watches, pale and unwashed. He can neither
read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence.
All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man.”

Blood Meridian: or The Evening Redness in the West,
by Cormac McCarthy.

For the broader implications of the act are this:

The 1953 coup in Iran shows that we, as Americans, are not in fact always on the right side of history, and it proves that our government in Washington and our intelligence agencies care more about power, control and profit than they do freedom, democracy, law, human rights and human dignity.

The 1953 coup in Iran serves as evidence that the United States often favors empire, imperialism and dictatorship over democracy, liberty and human decency. Finally, it reveals another indicative and important fact about our country: we often create our own enemies and conflicts through our short-sighted and arrogant actions abroad.

Alongside slavery, holocaust, genocide, American Exceptionalism and American Innocence, perhaps American Hubris, born of the deadly duo of arrogance and ignorance, should be ranked among the top contenders for our greatest character flaws, original sins and primal crimes as a country born of violence, and violence, and violence, war and violence.

Land of the Free and Home of the Brave vs.
the Land of the Enslaved and the Home of the Forever Fearful

Make no mistake about it: we’re a violent nation, from the beginning. We’re a country born out of brutality. We’re an empire born on and out of the frontier of the blood meridian. Though war, violence and brutality are not all we are as Americans, they are indeed a definitive part of who we are as an American nation.

Until we truly reckon with this reality, we’ll never be free, great or courageous as a country. Unlike our fundamental and natural human rights, “the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave” are qualities that were not endowed to us by our Creator at the birth of our country.

The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave must be earned continually. The land of the free and the home of the brave have a moral component alongside its physical one. One way to earn these noble titles is through daring to reckon with who we have been as a country and who we are today as a nation.

Otherwise, without a national moral reckoning, the title of Land of the Enslaved and the Home of the Forever Fearful may be more apt for our country and for us as Americans.

The Forever War on Iran Gallery

Down With Empire
& No More to Forever War

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought,
but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

Albert Einstein (Attributed)

When we hear all this talk about “Death to America” what the Iranians mean is the same thing American patriots and revolutionaries meant in our country when on July 4, 1776 they proclaimed themselves free and independent of foreign rule and said, “Down with the British Empire!”

The same way we fought for our freedom and independence from imperial rule in the 18^th and 19^th centuries Iranians have been fighting for their freedom, independence and sovereignty in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. Once the Iranians fought the British, as we did, now they’re fighting the US, even as many Iranians work toward change in their own political system, too.

“Death to America” is not a war cry calling for the annihilation of the United States or the death of Americans. “Death to America” means, quite simply, “Damn America. Damn them.” It is a bitter cry of anger, frustration and exasperation, not annihilation, and it is directed at Washington, DC and at our politicians and the belligerent policies of our federal government, not at we the American people. Even Rick Steves has spoken to this truth.

Shared Sentiments and a Call
for Sincere Change in the Capital

In fact, if we think about it, the American people and the Iranian people may share much in this regard and sentiment, in our common frustration with Washington, DC and with the policies of the politicians residing there. Much of the world, it seems, is fed up not with America and Americans, but with Washington and with US militarism, warmongering, and imperialism.

In 2020, it’s time for the US government to listen to and act upon the desires and the will of the American people. We the People wield the power. We the People possess the sovereignty. We the People have delegated power to our federal government in Washington, DC for them to represent our interests.

That is their work, their sworn duty, but they have neglected their job, broken their oaths, willfully disobeyed their duties and failed us and our nation. Red and Blue, Democrats and Republicans, alike. They’ve failed us. We the People now need to lead our so-called leaders in DC and demand that they serve the interests of the American people and the Republic of the United States.

It’s Time to End the Forever War on Iran

“The first casualty, when war comes, is truth, and whenever
an individual nation seeks to coerce by force of arms another,
it always acts, and insists that it acts, in self-defense.”

Hiram W. Johnson

To war with Iran, let us please say: “No.” To war on Iran, we must unequivocally say: “No!” It is time for the War on Terror and the Forever War to end. It’s time for the US’s war for the Greater Middle East to end. It’s time to bring our soldiers home. All wars of aggression must end.

The war with Iran is nothing new. The warmongers in Washington have been waging a cold, clandestine war against Iran since 1953. The warmongers in Washington have been hot and horny for and hankering after a hot, all-out war with Iran for decades. We the American people must not give the warmongers their latest war. They lied to us about Vietnam, they lied to us about Iraq, they lie to us about Libya, Syria and Yemen, even as they continue to lie to us about Afghanistan, as the Afghanistan Papers have recently revealed.

Why should we the American people believe them now about Iran when they are proud and self-avowed liars?

Truth Remains the First Casualty of War:
The Blunt Reality of an Extra-Judicial Assassination

We were told by Washington that Iran and Qasem Soleimani were plotting imminent attacks on the United States. But this story has proven to be fabricated, and in the wake of the assassination the truth has emerged.

The truth is that Qasem Soleimani was not a terrorist, he was a Major General in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the commander of its elite Quds Force. In short: he was a soldier, a warrior, a professional military officer.

In Washington’s War on Terror, General Soleimani has also served as an ally of the United States, helping to fight and rout the Taliban in Afghanistan. In the campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, General Soleimani has been perhaps the most effective and significant fighter on the battlefield. As Shia Muslims, Iranians are the mortal enemy of ISIS and Al-Qaeda, both of whom have openly declared their desire to literally annihilate Iran and all Shias from the face of the earth, whom they deem, along with Christians and many others, as infidels.

The fact is that if it were not for General Qasem Soleimani, the obsidian flag of ISIS might well be flying over both Baghdad and Damascus today. Imagine that Middle East, imagine that 21st century world.

Finally, it seems that General Soleimani was on an official state peace delegation, at the invitation of the Prime Minister of Iraq, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, when he was assassinated by an American MQ-9 Reaper drone attack at the Baghdad International Airport, the airport for commercial flights and for civilians in Baghdad, as he traveled freely and openly in public.

In the wake of the assassination, it has also become clear that General Soleimani has been in the cross-hairs of Washington and Tel Aviv for many, many years, now. Past US presidents were either unable to or simply too fearful of the blow-back to illegally and extra-judicially assassinate the Iranian general and former ally of the United States who has been instrumental in defeating ISIS and who has been on the front-lines of the fight against terrorism in the Middle East.

Justifications of the extra-judicial assassination of General Qasem Soleimani based on allegations of Iran killing US troops in Iraq may also be, it seems, a lie and a ploy to justify American aggression and war with Iran.

The World War III Blues

“Some time ago a crazy dream came to me,
I dreamt I was walkin’ into World War Three.”

“Talkin’ World War III Blues,” by Bob Dylan.

No. Their appetite for war is insatiable. Their lust for regime change, for “taking out” countries, is carnal, it’s sick and sadistic. A war with Iran would not be a war but yet another imperial hit job, as General Wesley Clark’s revelation about the September 2001 Pentagon memo revealed. After Iran, do we really believe the hit list will end and that there will be peace in the Middle East and throughout the world?

No way. It’ll be North Korea next, then Russia, before finally moving on to Washington’s true enemy and the greatest prize of them all, China. If World War III hasn’t come to the planet by then, it’ll be here for sure, for sure. No. The Forever War will never end. The Forever War will leave America, and much of the free and civilized world, along with the good green earth, in abject ruin and consummate devastation.

To war with Iran, let us say a resounding: “No.” To war on earth, we the people of the planet must say: “No more!”

For the costs of war are terrible, indeed. So terrible are the costs of war, and so blatantly and brazenly unjust, that we the people of America and the world can afford to suffer them no longer and to justify war no more.

The Great American Con &
the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–
industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination
endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for
granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper
meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our
peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper.”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address to the Nation,
January 17, 1961.

In 2020, the reality is this: we’re being had, friends. We’re being conned. We’re being played for pawns, for fools. In this great imperial con and chess game and in this corporate coup d’état and grand American heist, the Democrats are corrupted, complicit and criminal as the Republicans are corrupted, complicit and criminal.

Both parties are bought out by the military-industrial-congressional complex, and neither party is worthy of our unconditional support. Both Team Red and Team Blue are owned by Wall Street and the Ziocon warmongers, and the elites of both parties want to bomb Iran and raze the Middle East. There is indeed a bias in Washington toward war, as both Presidents Obama and Trump have discovered and admitted, one privately, the other publicly.

We cannot kid ourselves: there is indeed a military-industrial complex, and they do like war. They relish it, they live off it, they thrive off of war.

Divide, Conquer
& Rule

Together, let us wake up. Let us wise up and pay attention. Do not believe the lie of partisanship and do not fall prey to its insidious trap. “Divide and conquer.” Keep the American people raging at each other, warring with one another, endlessly berating one another. Keep the American people at each other’s jugulars. This is the age-old strategy our rulers are employing against us today.

My friends, it’s a trick, it’s a trap. They believe we are stupid, dumb Americans, crude animals, idiotic sheep, obedient bovines, imperial grunts, slaves too dim-witted to govern ourselves, and they treat us as fools. They doll out their bullshit by the bucket load to us, and they believe that not only will we eat it, but we’ll lap it up, relishing every putrid morsel, and that when we’re through gluttoning ourselves and satiating our base hungers, we’ll ask for more, more, more.

As if we were truly Allen Ginsberg’s insatiable pigs of western civilization. We’re not, friends. We’re no animals. They are. They’re barbaric beasts, they’re moralless warmongers, and they don’t live “over there,” they reside right here, at home, within the walls of the nation, in our corrupt capital, Washington, DC.

The Truth of the Washington War Machine

“America exists today to make war.”

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson on Democracy Now,
January 13, 2020.

We war with one another, on social media and around our Thanksgiving and Christmas Day dinner tables, and we fight each other in the trash-strewn, crumbling streets and back alleys of our insular neighborhoods, beneath decaying highway overpasses and in our filthy public parks now filled with homeless veterans and our fellow forgotten Americans.

In warring with one another, we perpetually increase our division as countrymen, and we brew bad blood among fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters, grandparents and grandchildren, neighbors, family members and friends. All the while, we fall prey to the other insidious lie and illusion of race, and forever fail to grasp the one true division in our country: class. Class and power.  

The rich vs. the rest. The ruling class vs. the ruled. The powerful vs. the powerless. They the plantation masters vs. we the forever working slaves. DC vs. America. The Corporation versus the Republic.

This is the real war in our country, and this is the true conflict of our times.

Battling the Beast Within the Walls

“Ever since 9/11, the beasts of the National Security State, the Beast of Endless Wars, the Beast of the Alligator that came out of the swamp and bit Donald Trump just a few days ago is alive and well. America exists today to make war. How else do we interpret nineteen straight years of war and no end in sight?

It’s part of who we are, it’s part of what the American Empire is.

We are going to lie, cheat and steal as Pompeo is doing right now, as Trump is doing right now, as Esper is doing right now, as Lindsey Graham is doing right now, as Tom Cotton is doing right now, and a host of other members of my political party, the Republicans, are doing right now. We’re going to cheat and steal to do whatever it is we have to do to continue this war complex.

That’s the truth of it, and that’s the agony of it.”

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, speaking about US Empire and Endless War, 2020.

The Wanton American Empire
wants War, War, War,
Forever More War

Meanwhile, as we fight among each other, the Empire marches merrily and wantonly along on its barbaric way, conducting business as usual, barreling us headlong toward another brutal foreign war in the Middle East, a war that will only enrich the already uber rich, while impoverishing and devastating the rest of us, here in our home in America and over there in their home in Iran.

Ignorantly and arrogantly parading along to the pseudo-patriotic beat of Uncle Sam’s hypnotic war drum, drum, drum, wanting only war, war, war, the US Empire goes raging along, waging forever war around the world and leaving not freedom and democracy but death and destruction in its savage and obscene wake.

-Neighbors-

A Collection of Photographs by the Author
of his Travels in Muslim Asia
(2017-2019)

An Appeal for Civility and Sanity
to Save Ourselves & the Planet

“I want to say one other challenge that we face is simply that we must find an
alternative to war and bloodshed. Anyone who feels, and there are still a lot of
people who feel that way, that war can solve the social problems facing
mankind is sleeping through a great revolution. President Kennedy said on
one occasion, ‘Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to
mankind.’ The world must hear this. I pray to God that America will hear this
before it is too late, because today we’re fighting a war.”

“Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,”
Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., March 1968.

My friends, my countrymen, this is no way to win the hearts and minds of our neighbors and fellow men. War is a lie. War is a racket. War is a trillion-dollar business. War for profit is immoral. Wars of aggression are illegal. Imperial war is an obscenity.

If we truly desire to make America great, either for the first time or again, let us begin by doing the right thing this time while we still have the chance. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen have been moral obscenities and military failures. If we truly desire to make our country great, let us begin by making America good and great in the heart and spirit and in the moral sense.

No war on Iran! Bring our troops home. Stop the insanity and the savagery while we still can. And if we wish to stand up and fight, let us stand up and fight to win back and redeem the Republic of these United States of America from the Empire that has hijacked our republic and that seems hellbent on obliterating our country and planet, this one earth that we all call home.

The Temple of Mars
& the Clique of Death

For this is another fact and truth that we rarely meditate on as Americans: the United States military is among the greatest polluters on the planet, and war is destroying the ecosystems of the earth and contributing to the ecocide of the planet.

In short: war lays waste to not only human life, but to all sentient life under the sun. And those pundits and politicians who worship War, War, War, who supplicate and sacrifice before the Temple of Mars are sadistic and sociopathic members of a death-cult and cabal who worship death and destruction and abhor life and creation, and they must be stopped before they obliterate the planet and all life under the sun.

King King Lives
& Speaks Eternally

“It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. The alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine.”

“Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” by Martin Luther King, Jr, a
speech delivered at the National Cathedral, Washington, DC, March 31, 1968.

These words were spoken by Doctor King four days before the Masters of War snuffed out his own life on earth. Thankfully for us, the power of Dr. King’s words remain with us today, resounding and resonating throughout the world, urgent and true as ever, and true words can never be destroyed.

Moral Obscenities
& Military Failures

“And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud
one sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown,
and in his hand a sharp sickle.

And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him
that sat on the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for
thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe.

And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth;
and the earth was reaped.”

The Book of Revelation, 14:14-16, King James Version.

Let us say it again: The United States Empire is bankrupt. Our federal government in the District of Columbia has no money and no morality. The US Empire’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Niger, Yemen, Ukraine, Nicaragua, Venezuela and across the globe today are moral obscenities and military failures.

We must not launch yet another morally obscene and militarily futile war in Iran. A war in Iran will reap only ruin for us all. War in Iran is a seed we do not want to sow this winter, for come the spring, summer or fall, when the warm, fine weather and our sanity both return, it’ll be a harvest that we will not want to reap. But if we let DC plant this deadly seed now, we the American people may have no choice but to garner the terrible harvest when the harvest time comes round at last.

An Appeal to Put Aside Partisanship
& Unite for Peace and Justice for All

If we truly support our troops, our soldiers, our servicemen and women, our brave warriors, most of whom fight their muddled wars with a noble heart, let us bring them home from the Middle East and from Washington’s eight hundred imperial military bases girdling the globe. Now.

If we are truly a nation of peace and human decency, if we are really a global force for good, if we are truly a land for freedom and a home for the brave, let us be brave at the dawn of this bold new decade, let us stand up together as Americans and say no more to war, for our sake and for the sake of our neighbors.

Let us put aside partisanship and unite to end the Forever War, and let us work toward peace between America and Iran. Toward peace on earth, and liberty, empathy and justice for all.

Let us put our great faith and deep belief not in the force of war but in the power of peace.

Peace Between America & Iran

Part V of An Open Letter
to My Fellow Americans

Continue Reading Here

“In A Murderous Time,” Part V of this essay and open letter has been published. You may read it here. If you missed Part III, “A Bipartisan American Rebuke,” you may read it here. Part V concludes this open letter and peace essay. So please keep reading if you’ve enjoyed this essay and would like to reach the end of the piece.

Thank you for reading and for visiting The Land West of Long Mountain Project. If you’re new to the Long West, you may learn more about the project and the author by checking out our first dispatch here.

Here’s to peace between America and Iran in 2020. Peace, and much wholeness to all.