Once again the United States is at war in the Middle East. This time it is a war initiated by a President who criticized his predecessors for having engaged in “endless” foreign wars and who campaigned on the promise that as President he would keep the United States out of such foreign conflicts. Of course, we do not know what the ultimate consequences of this war will be, but we offer three reasons to oppose it: (1) it is a war of aggression that is in clear violation of international law and of its ethical underpinnings in just war theory; (2) it contributes to the increasing erosion of constitutional and democratic norms and provides one of the building blocks for an American Fascism and for a consolidation of all sovereignty in the Presidency and specifically in the person of Donald Trump; and (3) Buddhist principles present a significant challenge to this war.
From an international law perspective, a war of aggression is the fundamental war crime, and those who initiate a war of aggression are war criminals. A war of aggression is an invasion of the territorial boundaries of another sovereign nation with the attempt to force its will on that nation. The nation who does this, not only violates the principles of national sovereignty and self-determination but initiates one of the greatest forms of suffering on those who are attacked, on its own soldiers and, on its own population as well. Furthermore, it causes insecurity and often direct suffering for the citizens of nearby nations and for the world at large, often bringing other nations into the war and setting a precedence for other wars of aggression throughout the world. International law is based on just war theory, which has developed some clear ethical criteria for determining when war is just and when it is not. The main criterion for a war being just is that it has a just cause, and the only unproblematic criterion for a war having a just cause is that it is a war of self-defense. There are, however, two possible exceptions. The first is what is sometimes called a pre-emptive strike. This requires that the country which initiates the war is in imminent danger of being attacked. The second is when there are massive human rights violations in a country that violates the conscience of the international community. However, it is not clear that war is the best way of addressing those human rights violations and, in any case, an attempt to address them through military force requires a decision by a legitimate international authority. Other criteria include the idea that the war must be organized by a legitimate authority; that its intention must be morally acceptable (criterion of right intention); that it must have clearly defined goals and a reasonable chance of success; that the suffering and harm caused by the war should not be greater than the suffering and harm eliminated by whatever the war could accomplish (the criterion of proportionality); and that it must be a last resort; In addition, there are criteria for whether the war, even if it has a just cause, is fought in a just way – the main criterion being that non-combatants should not be targeted and that every effort should be made to minimize civilian casualties. Other criteria include a prohibition of torture and of killing prisoners.
It is not very difficult to see that the United States’ initiation of the war against Iran is in fundamental violation of international law and of just war theory. It is clearly an invasion that violates the territorial integrity of Iran as a sovereign nation. It is not a war of defense against an aggressor. There was no evidence of imminent threat. The CIA stated that it is unlikely that Iran could pose a nuclear threat to the United States for at least a decade, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has declared that there was no evidence that Iran has an active plan for creating nuclear weapons. Furthermore, Trump himself declared that the earlier strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities had “obliterated” them. While it is true that the Iranian regime is guilty of human rights violations, there has been no international decision to intervene, and the Trump administration is surely not an international authority. In fact, the decision to go to war was not made by any legitimate authority, since, on constitutional grounds, only Congress has a right to declare war. Furthermore, it is not at all clear what the real intentions are for this war. Given the Trump administration’s suggestion that the main reason for its recent invasion of Venezuela was to get its oil and its recent threat to invade Greenland, the motives for this war are morally suspect. In addition, this war has no clearly defined goal. When asked to explain the reasons for this war, different members of the Trump Administration keep shifting from “imminent threat” to “regime change.” When asked how long they thought the war would last, the answer was sometimes four or five weeks and at another time that it might go on endlessly. Finally, this is not a war of last resort. One of the first things that Trump did near at the beginning of his second term in 2018 was to unilaterally withdraw from the comprehensive treaty that President Obama had negotiated with Iran, and just before initiating this war, he summarily broke off negotiations.
The war has already, within the first few days caused significant civilian casualties in a way that suggests that there is little regard for minimizing harm to non-combatants. Within the first day of the war, a bomb was dropped on a girls’ elementary school killing 165 girls. Trump recently acknowledged that the bombing had killed most of the officials who the U.S. had hoped would be a potential new leadership. In fact, Trump recently said that everyone better stay inside as the bombs will be dropping everywhere. Furthermore, the war has already spread to other countries in the Middle East – retaliatory strikes on Israel and to U.S. military facilities in Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the United Arab Republic, to Lebanon and to Iraq. France and England are preparing to defend Cypress. An Iranian missile has hit Turkey, which means that NATO will now be involved. The European countries are on edge.
BCD is a coalition for democracy, and another reason that we are opposed to this war is that it helps to further erode the democratic and legal Constitutional norms in the United States. Trump has been attempting to invest sovereignty in the office of the Presidency and more specifically in himself, thus undermining the Constitutional requirement of the separation of powers. This war significantly adds to this danger, as it is in defiance of the Constitutional requirement that only Congress can declare war. In addition, war tends to consolidate power in the hands of the President, and, given the authoritarian game plan of this administration, it could easily become a means to justify indefinite rule and further oppression. We see this war, then, as part of a pattern of attempting to suppress dissent, to create detention centers, to normalize troops in the street, to build ICE into a large parallel army, as well as to divert attention from Trump’s increasing unpopularity and the threat that the Epstein files can pose to his administration. Would be dictators need massive detention centers, parallel armies, targeting opposition forces as enemies of the people, and wars to consolidate their authoritarian rule. In other words, war is one of the significant building blocks in the road to fascism and in normalizing an authoritarian rule.
BCD is not only a coalition for democracy, but also a Buddhist coalition for democracy. So how does the war with Iran look from a Buddhist perspective? We can start by wishing loving kindness to all those who are in terror as the bombs fall, and to those throughout the region who are in fear for their lives or the loss of the lives of their loved ones, Then, extend our loving kindness to all the soldiers, the people in the planes that drop bombs, to the people in Israel hiding in their shelters, to the American servicemen in many Arab countries, and to the people in southern Lebanon who are fleeing their homes without knowing where they can go. In principle, we can extend it to the leaders in both countries who through their delusion and own suffering have brought suffering to their people and to the people of other countries. We can wish that their delusions and ill will are extinguished. We can attempt to develop our compassion in the same way. Does this mean that we do not take sides? When the bombs are falling, when masses of people are suffering as a result, we need to use our loving kindness and compassion to find ways to stop the horrors that this war is bringing. This does not simply mean that we cry for peace but that we analyze what is at stake, and see clearly what kind of a war this war is, what it is doing, what its significance is for the people of Iran, for those in the Middle East, for those in the United States, and for the whole world. We need to strip away the delusions and the hypocrisy and see that this is a war of aggression and not a war in response to an imminent threat. It is a war that violates international law, that is on all counts is an unjust war, and that this war is part of the pattern that threatens to further erode our democracy in the United States. It is a war that helps pave the way to fascism. Compassion that cannot see this is idiot compassion. We must do what we can to minimize harm and suffering and to oppose those who crave power and create conditions that are causing and will continue to cause suffering, conditions that are making the world a more dangerous place.
Let’s apply the eightfold path to this war. Those who have initiated this war do not have a right view of what they are doing, they do not correctly understand what horrors and suffering they are unleashing and will continue to unleash; they have deluded themselves into thinking that they can control the world. They also do not have right intention; in fact, they do not seem to understand what their intention is other than the desire for power and perhaps, for those who benefit from this war, wealth. They surely do not have right speech. The members of the Trump Administration continually contradict themselves and each other, and they pretend not to do so. They lie openly and with the intent to confuse, obfuscate, and mislead. When they talk to the American people or to the Iranians, they do not speak with the intention of solving the conflict but instead to destroy and gain more power. Right action – they engage in war without regard for the suffering they cause. They seem unconcerned about the deaths that will inevitably occur and the anxiety they are inflicting on the people in that region and throughout the world. Right livelihood – they use their position to gain wealth and power and are willing to destroy anything that stands in their way. They use this war to helps facilitate this kleptocracy’s march toward dictatorship. Right effort – they employ their effort on behalf of their craving for power and wealth, for advancing their ill will against all who stand in their way, and for other forms of their delusion. Right mindfulness – it is clear that the ravings of the President and his immediate associates are the ravings of madness. We cannot even say of them that they have wrong mindfulness. They are simply not mindful. Right concentration – as they jump from topic to topic, one excuse for the war to another, contradicting themselves sometimes in the same interview or speech. They cannot concentrate, and when it comes to war, their lack of concentration inflicts immense suffering on the world. Their lack of a clear plan is a manifestation of their inability to concentrate. They want the rest of us to lose our ability to concentrate on what is important in the fog of war.
None of this is an apology for the Iranian regime. They are a cruel regime that has caused massive suffering, not only but especially to their own people. They have killed thousands of protesters; they have oppressed and brutalized women, created prisons as torture chambers, and they have often done things that has made the world less safe. We could wish that someday they will become a democratic Iran, but this is unlikely to be accomplished by an illegal and unjust war of aggression. It cannot be accomplished through bombs that fall indiscriminately. It can only be accomplished by the self-determination and resistance of the Iranian people themselves. There is no contradiction in our recognizing this while also opposing the United States initiating a war of aggression. As the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said almost immediately after the war began, “remember that one can be against a hateful regime, as is the case with the Iranian regime, and at the same time be against a military intervention that is unjustified, dangerous, and outside international law.”