US president Donald Trump says that his war in Iran \u2014 currently in a supposed ceasefire \u2014 resulted in \u201ctotal and complete victory. 100%. No question about it.\u201d The Iranian regime, via a statement from its Supreme National Security Council, also claims \u201cgreat victory.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the war is really over (I\u2019m skeptical), who actually won?<\/p>\n
Well, not you.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can no more win a war,\u201d said Jeannette Rankin, \u201cthan you can win an earthquake.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
We could use a few Jeannette Rankins these days.<\/p>\n
Not so much to vote against going to war, though: Congress hasn\u2019t 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).<\/p>\n
The real function of a Jeanette Rankin or her equivalent is to remind us now and then of an immutable and irrefutable truth:<\/p>\n
War is always a damaging and destructive thing.<\/p>\n
Apart from a few politicians and generals who get to crow about \u201cwinning,\u201d and some politically connected profiteers pre-positioned to knock down fat contracts at the expense of taxpayers, everyone, on all sides, loses.<\/p>\n
Some \u2014 soldiers and civilian non-combatants alike \u2014 lose their lives or end up maimed or orphaned.<\/p>\n
Others see their homes destroyed and are forced to flee to hopefully safer locations, sometimes never to return.<\/p>\n
Even those far from the front and seemingly safe from shelling, aerial bombardment, or rocket attack find that their paychecks don\u2019t go nearly as far and that some things just aren\u2019t nearly as available at any price as during peacetime. I still have my mother\u2019s World War 2 ration book. Fortunately, Americans haven\u2019t suffered those levels of privation at any time since, but many people, in many places, have seen that and worse.<\/p>\n
War may be, as Randolph Bourne said, \u201cthe health of the state,\u201d but it\u2019s all down side for regular people who just want to live their lives in peace and prosperity.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s hoping that the Iran earthquake wasn\u2019t just a foreshock, and that the aftershocks are minor. Support peace!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US president Donald Trump says that his war in Iran \u2014 currently in a supposed ceasefire \u2014 resulted in \u201ctotal and complete victory. 100%. No question about it.\u201d The Iranian regime, via a statement from its Supreme National Security Council, also claims \u201cgreat victory.\u201d If the war is really over (I\u2019m skeptical), who actually won? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[816],"class_list":["post-58688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58691,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58688\/revisions\/58691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58688"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=58688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}