April 14, 2007
by Steve Osborn

A letter to our alleged Representatives on war with Iran

Cheney/BushCo would have you believe that Iran, and indeed, all Islamic countries, are filled with bloodthirsty jihadists eager to slaughter us.

I have lived in Islamic countries, as well as other non-US countries. The average person in any nation is no different from the man in the street in New York, Stanwood, or Camano Island. All we want is a chance to live in peace, raise and educate our families, provide them with food and shelter.

The Islamic peoples that I lived with were kind, generous and loving. At that time, the Ayatollah Khomeni was doing his thing. I was told over and over, "Steve, that is not Islam, that is politics. Islam is not like what is portrayed by the governments and the press."

I found that to be so. I observed the Fast of Ramadan and meditated on its lessons, which are lessons of love and compassion for humanity. I have read the Holy Qu'ran and found that most of it would not be out of place in the New Testament. There are passages of violence in it, much like that of the Old Testament, but that is not the lesson of Islam.

As there are members of the Islamic religious right who use those passages to foment hate, so do the members of our own religious right, use the blood and vengeance of the Old Testament to foment hatred and narrow-mindedness amongst their own parishioners.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, we are systematically exterminating the Islamic "man in the street" along with his family. We are destroying their homes, their mosques, we are supplying both sides of a civil war as an excuse to stay in Iraq until we have their oil. Now we want to do the same thing to the Iranians.

Iranian people may be helping their brothers in Iraq, I don't know, but if the shoe were on the other foot and the Canadians or Mexicans were helping us to drive out an occupation of the United States, I would certainly welcome that. That is not evil.

You must pull the funding out from under the Cheney/Bush war machine, and you must forbid yet another illegal, preemptive war, this time against either Iran or Syria.

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Lock and load "Do as we tell you or die," is not diplomacy or negotiation. It is the sort of thing that Hitler got away with until Poland, when the rest of the world finally got tired of what Hitler was doing and decided to fight back. Iran may well be Bush's Poland. Much of the world has good relations with Iran, along with mutual defense and trading treaties. The whole world may be afraid of the current insanity in the White House, but they may not take it forever.

Also, Iran is not the starved, embargoed nation that Iraq was, with no spare parts for their armor, no air force, and no air defenses. It was easy to take Iraq, but Iran is a first class military nation. They have not been aggressors for a long time, but their defense will be formidable and we shall pay a horrible price, even if we can lay waste to their country.

This is all so unnecessary. Just show some guts and forbid still more wars. Cut off the funding for more military adventures. Then sit down, discuss and negotiate. That is the way it is done in civilized nations.

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Stephen M. Osborn [send him email] is a freelance writer living on Camano Island in the Pacific Northwest. He is an "Atomic Vet." (Operation Redwing, Bikini Atoll 1956, ) who has been very active working and writing for nuclear disarmament and world peace. He is a retired Fire Battalion Chief, lifelong sailor, writer, poet, philosopher, historian and former newspaper columnist.

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