Has the world become so scrambled that we can no longer tell which conflicts we are meant to condemn and which we are expected to accept? With so many wars unfolding at once, the moral lines often seem to shift depending on who is firing the missiles.
One might assume the “bad” side is the one responsible for killing civilians, including children. But in today’s political language, even that test is applied unevenly.
As Iran holds days of vast and angry funeral ceremonies for its assassinated leader, much of the Western commentary has returned to familiar themes: the menace of Tehran’s clerical regime, its hardline image and its ambitions around nuclear weapons.
There is no need to pretend Iran’s leadership is benign. It is an authoritarian theocracy, and it may well be more determined than ever to pursue nuclear arms after being targeted by the US and Israel.
But imagine, for a moment, the reaction if a Russian missile had killed a senior Western leader and, in the same strike, also taken the life of his one-year-old granddaughter. The outrage would be immediate, relentless and entirely understandable.
That, however, is what happened to Iran. The child was Zahra Mohammadi Golpayegani, and her life was no less precious than that of any other one-year-old girl anywhere in the world.
Yet no one in the US government has publicly confronted her death in any meaningful way, much less offered an apology. The implied argument appears to be that responsibility lay with Iran for her presence, rather than with those who launched the surprise attack that killed her grandfather.
A woman mourns during a public farewell ceremony for the late Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
When Do Civilian Deaths Matter More Than Others?
Oh, and by the way, aren’t we against assassination? Isn’t the murder of John F Kennedy one of the worst crimes of our time? Don’t we rightly excoriate the Russians for their revolting poisonings on British soil? I must take another handful of anti-confusion pills before I continue.
Then what would we say if Russia had rocket-bombed a girls’ school in Ukraine, killing 175 people, mainly children?
But when the US obliterated the Minab girls’ school in Iran, there was never any really fierce grief or anger in the West. Why not? What civilised human does not weep and rage at the slaughter of children, any children?
Once again, it turns out to be Iran’s fault for aggressively putting a girls’ school where the Pentagon thought there was a Revolutionary Guard base, or some such tripe. Where are all those sophisticated satellites – you know, the ones that can tell a blackboard from a sub-machine gun at a height of 150 miles – when you really need them?
As for Israel’s bombing and shelling of civilians in Gaza and Lebanon, what would we say if the Russians did these things in Ukraine?
We’d be pretty cross. We certainly wouldn’t (as the Americans do) send them more money and ammunition so that they could keep right on doing it.
A picture of one-year-old Zahra Mohammadi Golpayegani, granddaughter of Khamenei, is displayed near the family’s coffins.
A Plea for Less Outrage and More Reason
My point is very simple. Our emotions about these events are in a mess. We are quite right to be distressed by assassinations, by the deaths of children, by the mangling and killing of civilians in wars they did not choose.
But our pity and distress must apply in all cases, not just in some. Our own side, if such a thing still exists, has, alas, done some terrible things which may not be expiated in our lifetimes.
It is not even true that the bad people have, in all cases, started the fighting.
Vladimir Putin is rightly despised for his lawless invasion of Ukraine. But the surprise bombing of Iran, while peace talks were in progress, was a shameful act of duplicity which its victims will not quickly forget.
So, in all these wars, may we please have less righteous passion? We aren’t entitled to feel especially righteous. And may we have more cool thought, which we badly need?
What outcome do we really seek in Ukraine or Iran? Can we afford the price, in lives and freedom, which we are being asked to pay for it? Do we want a more or less permanent war of bombing in Europe, which might at any time spread westwards to our own cities?
Have nearly 50 years of relentless hostility to Iran, and cruel sanctions imposed on its innocent people, brought down the regime? Well, no. Might it be worth trying something else?
For these suggestions I shall of course be called, yet again, an appeaser, traitor etc.
This thoughtless bilge drowns debate in countries which have let simple-minded propaganda drive out thought. Carry on like this and we will blunder into total national disaster.
