The criminality of the war was clear from the start and made more blatant when U.S.-Israeli strikes hit civilian areas in Minab, killing hundreds of civilians, mostly children and women, writes Ramzy Baroud.
Funeral of the children of the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, Iran, who were killed in the U.S.-Israeli bombing on Feb. 28. (Tasnim News Agency/ Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 4.0)
Doubtless, the war launched by U.S. President Donald Trump is not popular among ordinary Americans.
According to the latest public opinion poll, only a minority of Americans — part of the dwindling core of Trump’s supporters — believe that the U.S.-Israeli aggression against Iran has merit.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in early March, only 27 percent of Americans approve of the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran — while 43 percent disapprove and 29 percent are unsure.
This pro-war constituency is likely to remain supportive of Trump until the end of his term in office, and long after.
However, the war on Iran is not popular, and it is unlikely to become popular, especially as the Trump administration is reportedly fragmented between those who want to stay the course and those desperate for an exit strategy. Such an exit strategy would allow their president to save face before the midterm elections in November.
Mainstream media — aside, of course, from the pro-war chorus in right-wing news organizations, podcasters and think tanks — also recognize that their country has entered a quagmire.
If it continues unchecked, it will likely prove worse than the war in Iraq in 2003 or the long war in Afghanistan, which lasted 20 years and ended with a decisive American defeat in August 2021 following the withdrawal of U.S. forces and the collapse of the Afghan government.
Both wars have cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $8 trillion, including long-term veteran care and interest on borrowing, according to the Brown University Costs of War Project.
While it is important to highlight the unpopularity of America’s latest military adventure, such opposition must rest on moral and legal grounds.
Iran is already promising to be even more costly if the insanity of the war — instigated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war-crazed government — does not end very quickly.
Many Americans may understand the difficult situation in which Trump’s unhinged behavior and his unexplained loyalty to Netanyahu have placed their country. What they rarely confront is the moral dimension of that crisis.
Ignoring the Criminality
Though they speak of the war’s failure — the lack of strategy, the lack of preparation, the absence of an end goal, and the confusion surrounding its objectives — very few in mainstream media have taken what should have been the obvious moral position: that the war itself is criminal, unjustifiable, and illegal under international law.
That position should have been obvious the moment the first bomb was dropped over Tehran. The aggression — particularly while negotiations between Iran and the United States were underway under Omani mediation — was ethically indefensible.
Any remaining doubt should have disappeared when U.S.-Israeli strikes hit civilian areas, including schools and residential districts in the city of Minab in southern Iran, killing hundreds of civilians, mostly children and women.
This moral silence is not new. In fact, it has often been masked by a familiar rhetorical device: the selective invocation of women’s rights.
In nearly every U.S. war on Arab and Muslim countries, women’s rights have featured heavily in the propaganda used to justify war.
The vast majority of mainstream media organizations, think tanks, human rightsgroups and activists — even those who rejected military interventionism on principle — agreed at least on that particular premise: the urgency of women’s rights.
They used Malala Yousafzai as a symbol of girls’ education and women’s rights, presenting her as a model of American benevolence.
At the same time, they ignored the fact that among the countless innocent Muslims killed across the Middle East and Asia in the last few decades — some counts place them in the millions — children and women represented a large share of the victims.
Malala Yousafzai addressing a U.N. conference in New York on universal primary education, July 2013. (UN Photo/Rick Bajornas)
The same scenario was repeated in Gaza during the ongoing genocide, where U.N. agencies estimate that women and children make up roughly 70 percent of the more than 72,200 Palestinians killed since October 2023.
According to data compiled by U.N. Women’ and Gaza’s health authorities, the total includes an estimated 33,000 women and girls.
Yet mainstream media continues to center Israeli claims about abuses of women’s rights by Hamas in Gaza, as if the tens of thousands of women killed and maimed by Israeli bombardment were not even worthy of serious consideration.
The same pattern is now repeating itself in Iran. The administration of Donald Trump — a man known for his degrading views and actions toward women — has been allowed, along with war criminal Netanyahu, to frame the war against Iran as a struggle for women’s rights and liberation.
They cultivated a network of supposed women’s rights activists, presenting them as authentic Iranian voices whose mission was to rescue women from massive human rights abuses in their own country.
Even on the Left, many fell into that trap — denouncing Trump on the one hand, while still absorbing and reproducing his and Israel’s propaganda.
Now that thousands of women and children have been killed or wounded in the U.S.-Israel unprovoked, unethical, and illegal war on Iran, many of these same voices have fallen silent, quietly placing women’s rights on hold until the outcome of the onslaught becomes clear.
Though much of the media now expresses doubt about Trump’s war, the moral foundation of anti-war opposition has largely disappeared, replaced instead by a narrow strategic debate over costs, risks, and political consequences.
Complaints about rising energy prices, commentary about Trump’s political immaturity and criticism of his failure to assess the situation properly before ordering bombs to fall have replaced the moral argument altogether.
Equally absent is Netanyahu’s role in the war, as well as the stranglehold Israel exerts over successive U.S. administrations — Republican and Democrat alike — including the supposedly “America First” president.
This logic dominates much of the mainstream strategic debate. Commentators such as Fareed Zakaria, Thomas Friedman, and others have repeatedly argued, in one form or another, that the United States must avoid being consumed by Middle Eastern conflicts and instead concentrate on what they describe as the central geopolitical challenge of our time: the rise of China.
While it is important to highlight the unpopularity of America’s latest military adventure, such opposition must rest on moral and legal grounds.
That said, mainstream liberal media should not be confused with genuine anti-war voices. Their objection to war is rarely principled. They tend to oppose military interventions only when those wars fail to serve U.S. strategic interests, threaten corporate profits, or risk undermining Israel’s long-term security.
This is not opposition to war.
It is the logic of war itself.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a widely published and translated author, an internationally syndicated columnist and editor of The Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, 2018). He earned a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter (2015), and was a non-resident scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, UCSB. Visit his website.
This article is from Common Dreams.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Given that there is damned little opposition to war, frankly, I do not give a dang if people are opposing war alongside me because of morality, or just selfish self-interest, or for any other reason. A rose still smells as sweet, no matter what the name. And anti-war protestors are beautiful no matter why they are in the streets. When I find a person beside me behind the barricades, I do not criticize them for being there for the wrong reason. I am just happy that someone is fighting beside me.
One does have to remember that with Democrats, they will disappear from the anti-war cause as soon as it is a Democrat back in charge of the weekly kill meetings in the White House basement. That just means I do not plan on them being here tomorrow. But, anyone with a non-western philosophy knows the value of living in the moment. So, if in this moment you are beside me, then Joyful Greetings Comrade. If tomorrow you are supporting a pro-war Democrat, then Curses upon the Traitor.
The “liberal media” is not liberal. In these times, Liberal is not liberal. Liberal used to be a left populist movement. Today, the liberals hate populists. Today’s liberals are bankers, generals, corporate CEO’s and spies. This is a “freedom = slavery” sort of thing. Liberal is not equal to liberal. Today, “Liberal = banker”.
There is a left flank of the “Liberals”, which provides cover via the anti-left notion of “Identity Politics”. This is used to get various Identities supporting a far right bankers’ agenda that they would never support without the Identity Politics cover story. But that fakery is not liberal. It is its own version of the politics of hate, which is the opposite of liberal.
Heck, in Canada, the head of the Central Bank got promoted, or demoted, to Prime Minster ….as the leader of the Liberal Party. Liberals are now central bankers. And even when politically, “Liberal = Central Banker”, it is still true that bankers are never liberal in their beliefs.
There is no Liberal media, not in America. There is far-right wing militarist media, that supports the “Centrists”, and there is the far-far-far-right-wing media that supports a modern Rasputin who speaks in tongues. But there ain’t no liberal media.
A pro-war, pro-banker, pro-military, pro-CIA, pro-police, pro-prisons faction that never ever raises the minimum wage is not anywhere near “liberal.”
Trump’s loyalty to Satanyahoo is not unhinged. It is very rational: keep the master happy so that his Epstein files are not released.
Correct. Our President is compromised and controlled.
The total lack of MsM calls for sanctions on the US and Israel, like those imposed on Russia for its illegal war, says it all.
Ramzy Baroud, from my perspective, you make several extremely imporant observations not yet part of the public discourse:
“Complaints about rising energy prices, commentary about Trump’s political immaturity and criticism of his failure to assess the situation properly before ordering bombs to fall have replaced the moral argument altogether.”
This, I would suggest is not an anomaly, while true.
In the following quotes you use terms that many use: “popularity” and “unpopularity” … and I would respectfully suggest that these be replaced by “support” or “do ot support,” In my view, something as horrific as the complete destruction of communities, killing hundreds of thousands of people and calling it “popular” or “unpopular” reflects (in your case, unintentionally) an absence of feeling, an absence of any understanding of what war is, what it is like to be on the receiving end of this abuse of power.
“While it is important to highlight the unpopularity of America’s latest military adventure, such opposition must rest on moral and legal grounds.”
In fact, using your own words, to consider a war as unpopular …”This is not opposition to war.”
I offer this observation in the context of having great respect for your scholarship, your integrity, your expressed concersn.
Corporate media will never criticize the morality of the US regardless of what crimes it commits. The US makes errors in judgment with the best of intentions always according to their owners and editors. We never intentionally harm people for being in the way of corporate “investment” in other countries. They are the perpetuators of US mythology. The trouble they are running into is the contradiction is no longer sustainable.
Anything corporate makes all judgments and decisions on the bottom line. Profits and losses. The decision is made by the spreadsheet and whichever choice leads to the greatest profits is always chosen. This is the morality of capitalism, where all decisions are made on maximum material gains, and traditional morality has no value whatsoever. This is the philosophy of capitalism, and how capitalism makes every decision. Corporate media will never follow any other standard other than to maximize the profits of the owning conglomerate and all its subsidiaries.
This is the modern combination of corporate power and government power, in harness together, for maximum profits. The corporations that control all that most people see, hear or read will keep this in place for maximum profits. Under capitalist philosophy, there is nothing but the profits, and the bottom line makes every decision. This is what capitalism looks like.
It has been suggested by several Political Podcasters that Netenyahu has the goods on Trump in the Epstein files Israel is in possesion of. It seems as thought Netenyahu, Putin and any number of other international leaders are able to lead Trump around like a bull with a ring in its nose. Nothing surprises me a whole lot any more.
In what way is Putin leading Trump around by a nose ring? This is a liberal talking point that lacks evidence. Putin most assuredly did not goad Trump into attacking Venezuela, Iran or Cuba.
Trump is easy to lead like a bull. It does not take blackmail material. Trump’s is easy to predict. If you embarrass Trump, you know exactly how he will react. If you jab Trump in the nose, you know exactly how he will react. And that list goes on and on. This means that it is very easy for any opponent to lead Trump around like a bull with a ring in his nose.
If you know that if you do A, then Trump will react with B, thus setting you up for C, to which Trump will react to as D, then yes, anyone who is not a fool can lead Trump around like a bull with a ring in his nose. Americans who do not play chess are not used to thinking like this, but one can bet that the chess masters of Russia and the go masters of China can easily figure it out.
So yes, Putin is likely doing exactly that today, as is Xi. They have to be as stupid as Americans not to be doing so. But, the hateful Americans only see their weak and incompetent President being led around like a bull with a ring in his nose, and use that as a reason to hate even more. And to start even more wars, since the Dems are still mad as heck that Trump is not fighting a world war against Russia like the Democrats will do the second they get back into power.
The U.S.A. has used spurious justifications and provocations as the justification for every war it has been involved in except for the Civil War. In fact, there have been fewer obvious lies about the current war’s justification than in most earlier wars. Breaking Iran’s military capability, if not its political system, has been the justification from the beginning. Clearing the way for Israel to drive out its Arab population and seize yet more territory from the surrounding countries is the only thing Trump and Co. aren’t admitting as a reason for America’s attack. Trump and Co. have been pretty clear in saying the U.S.A. should return to imperialism and seize new territories.
Given all this, I don’t see how morality matters much. If one’s rulers have declared themselves devoted to an evil, what argument can there be? We can claim that the U.S.A. hasn’t seen itself as the spearhead of W. Civ’s attempted conquest of the world in the past. That vision of the U.S.A.’s purpose has simply been restored as official policy, rather than the covert policy it was since F.D.R.
To declare the war immoral is to declare oneself and ones faction disloyal to the country as many, perhaps most Americans see it. The highest good, as far as the majority of any citizenry is concerned, is patriotism. This majority may tolerate dissenters and slackers when times are good, but when their society is perceived to be under threat, that toleration evaporates. Right now most Americans don’t see the country under threat from Iran or other external agencies with the possible exception of Russia and China. All it will take to change that is for a major loss of life here or to American servicemen and women abroad.
So tread lightly on these matters and keep and foreign passport handy, if possible.
It is not a given that a majority of the citizenry will see patriotism as the highest good. This is of course the goal of the propaganda. But, they have to work very hard to achieve it, and there are noticeable occasions when it has failed. The Vietnam War convinced a lot of Americans that patriotism was not the highest goal. World War 1 convinced the Russian people that patriotism is not the highest goal. By 1917, the French Army was in mutiny, and patriotism was not in vogue in the trenches.
There is a limit, and that limit is when it becomes obvious to the people that patriotism is causing them harm. Humans do still have a survival instinct, and that will always override a mythical construct like ‘patriotism’.