Reject War

U.S. out of the Middle East

This is what every person of conscience has been warning about for nearly an entire year: Israel’s genocide in Palestine leading to a wider conflict. We are now on the precipice, as Iran fires over 100 ballistic missiles at Israel, with many making it past the Iron Dome and making contact, and with Israel invading Lebanon. Israel has also bombed Syria and Yemen this week, and its relentless killing in Gaza hasn’t ceased either. Despite all of this the U.S. backing of the Netanyahu regime remains unchanged.

Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash

In response to Iran’s bombardment, which is itself a response to Israel assassinating Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and killing hundreds of civilians at the same time, Biden directed the U.S. military to help shoot down Iranian missiles and defend Israel. At the same time, the President said that the U.S. is ready to protect American soldiers in the region, which of course begs the question of why there are still 40,000 U.S. troops in the Middle East, with the Pentagon sending another 2,000-3,000 as we speak.

The answer is two-fold, with the thousands of additional troops being sent very explicitly to help defend Israel, and the existing 40,000 being there largely under the outdated premise of “stabilizing the region.” I say outdated because there is a mountain of evidence, from Afghanistan to Iraq to the current state of affairs surrounding Israel, that the U.S. presence in the Middle East is not actually about bringing peace and stability, or that if it is the Pentagon’s efforts have been one, monumental and unfathomably destructive failure. One clear, devastating way to see the horror of Washington’s “war on terror” is that over 940,000 people have died in post-9/11 wars due to direct violence and an estimated 3.6-3.8 million people have been killed indirectly, with the total death toll reaching at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting.

But right now, in this current moment of precipitous escalation from Israel, and retaliation by Iran, the U.S. enabling of the Netanyahu regime and the IDF is inviting another wave of mass death. What is so incredibly sinister is that the escalation from parties like the Houthis and Hezbollah is premised, at least in large part, on a desire to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza. As a recent NBC article details, “Israel decided to kill Nasrallah after he refused to separate Lebanon from Gaza.” Israeli officials concluded that the leader of Hezbollah would not accept any diplomatic solution to the fighting on the Lebanon-Israel border that didn’t include an end to their genocide in Gaza, so they decided to kill him, despite knowing that it would escalate both the conflict on their northern border and across the wider region.

Photo by AHMAD BADER on Unsplash

We have seen this choice play out in various ways. Will Israel risk reprisal from the Houthis or end the genocide in Gaza? Will they risk an attack from Iran or end the genocide in Gaza? Will they invade Lebanon or end the genocide in Gaza? Each time Netanyahu refuses to stop murdering thousands of Palestinian civilians, and each time he escalates. Also, perhaps most important for us here in America, each time the Biden administration refuses to provide material consequences to Israel. And now this series of decisions has led us to the edge of a war in the Middle East, which the U.S. terrifyingly close to getting involved in a deadly, all-out regional conflict.

We have to be unequivocal right now. There can be no war in the Middle East. The U.S. spent 20 years in dishonest, deadly, disastrous wars that this country should never have gotten involved with in the first place. It’s no coincidence that men like David Frum, who worked for George Bush and pushed the lie that Saddam Hussein was conspiring with al-Qaeda to get us into Iraq, are now supporting Israel’s attack on Lebanon. There is, in Washington and elsewhere, a cohort that believes Arab lives are expendable, worth less than the lives of people here at home. Not only is that gross, immoral, and untrue — it also puts us all in more danger.

I know that I’ve been consumed recently with trying to help more people see how devaluing the lives of people abroad, or at home, or anywhere you’re told that some “other” people should be looked down on actually hurts us too. In the Middle East oppression breeds resistance, war means Americans being sent to die, and all of it means more resources for war and vicious corporations and less money spent on climate resilience or health care or schools or all of the above. War is always working-class folks here killing working-class folks there, and vice versa, while our leaders profit and luxuriate in a society increasingly structured for them instead of structured for all of us.

So we must be loud, and as disruptive as necessary. No war, no arms for Israel. No war machine, no money for Israel. Cut off the genocidal government that is spreading death across an increasingly wide radius. Some sources will try to paint Israel as the victim, but after witnessing a year of genocide we must be clear and immune to propaganda. We know who has been the source of aggression, and we know that the U.S. has handed Israel bombs and blank checks for far too long. It needs to end now, before this violence and destruction spreads even further. No to war, U.S. out of the Middle East, and Israel must be cut off, now.