I found the following at Ed Feser’s place. I wonder what Vito and the rest of you think of it. I myself have taken “Death to America” as a highly credible threat and the statement of a policy the Iranian regime intends to carry out if we let them acquire nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.
. . . I figure that I ought to take the time to clear up one particularly stupid talking point that I’ve also seen brought up: the fact that the Iranians say “Death to America” being interpreted as evidence of ruthless savagery or genocidal intent. This requires you to interpret the phrase in a thuddingly literal manner, despite the fact that the Iranians don’t use it that way, and the regime’s officials have repeatedly clarified that that isn’t what it means.
Yes, if you translate “Marg bar Âmrikâ” literally, that’s what it means, but repeated usage has made it clear that it’s intended to be interpreted as opposition to American empire and policy towards Muslim countries. It’s why official Iranian government documents translate it as “Down with America” instead, because that’s more in line with the spirit of what the phrase actually means.
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Hello, EXE, I agree, that’s another silly talking point.
Given America’s role in Iranian history , and speaking to an Iranian , Ed’s take seems to make sense ? What has led to your understanding? Actually curious.
I take the threat seriously because of Iran’s past behavior. Scroll down to the link provided by Dave Bagwill.
Bill,
Ah, I see; it is all so simple according to EXE; all we have to do is forget history: So, let’s follow him and ignore the violent and murderous attacks on the United States and its citizens for the last four decades by the Iranian terrorist regime and its proxies, since, after all, its official documents translate “Marg bar” as “Down with” rather than “Death to” America.
You see, there was no “ruthless savagery or genocidal intent” when the Iranian terrorists shouted this phrase as they took 52 Americans as hostages, holding them for 444 days beginning in November of 1979, during which many were tightly bound for long periods, beaten, placed in solitary confinement for months, repeatedly threatened with death, and subject to mock executions. And while we are at it, lets ignore the “Death to America” that was the standard mass rallying cry of this regime in the four years following the revolution (and ever since) and which, according to the statements of its leadership motivated Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy, to conduct the 1983 bombing attacks on the US Embassy (63 dead, including 17 Americans) and the Marine barracks (241 dead) in Beirut, Lebanon. Let’s also forget about the more than 600 American deaths by EFPs and other devices planted by Kata’ib Hezbollah, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq and other Shia militias in Iraq from 2003-11, whose resistance ideologies inevitably included the “Marg bar Amrik” slogan. I could continue in this way, speaking of the 2019 US Baghdad Embassy Assault, when the attackers shouted it, as currently do the Houthis (“God is great, death to America’), but I said enough.
Another point: “Down with” is not as benign a phase as EXE would have us believe; its meaning depends on what or whom it is aimed at. Thus, the Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “something you say, write, or shout to show your opposition to someone or something, and to demand that [1] the person be removed from power or [2] the thing be destroyed” (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/down-with). So, it follows that while in a domestic political context, [1] is the intended meaning, in an external context, that is, when speaking of a rival nation, [2] is meant.
Hard to disagree with Vito’s points and facts. Feser wants us to think like the masses should in Orwell’s 1984. War means Peace etc. His is a ridiculous position typical of a “liberal academic intelligentsia”.
Bill,
I don’t think any outsider, including Ed Feser and his interlocutor, EXE, knows what rolls through the fevered mind of a Persian Shia jihadist when he chants “Death to America.” Does the definition have shadings?
I don’t know about you, but if I were a Shia jihadi I wold have world conquest in view. First, we’ll get rid of Israel. Then we’ll lord it over the Sunnis, because we liberated Jerusalem and they didn’t. Then together we’ll trample the Great Satan underfoot, Islam will inherit the earth, and the mahdi will return with Isa, son of Miriam, in tow. That’s what I would want. Why settle for Jihad Lite, as expressed in the softer, “Down with America?” As a jihadi I wouldn’t be merely opposed to American policy; I’d be opposed to America as such. I’d take the red meat definition of “Death to America.”
Iranian dissidents riff on the chant. You can hear on YouTube video clips, “Mat, mat, dik-ta-tour.” Do you think the protestors mean “down with the government” or “we want a different Supreme Leader,” or do you think that if they ever got their hands on one of those mullahs they’d string him up by his turban?
What would be Ed Feser’s or EXE’s opinions if we swapped out “Amerika” for “Israel?”
The Houthis are a heterodox sect running Yemen and allied with Iran. Their flag says: “God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam.” Although EXE thinks that “Death to America” does not entail genocidal intent, would he make the same argument about Israel?
Nonetheless, I agree with Ed Feser and EXE that “Death to America” is frivolous background noise.
I don’t agree with your statement above that it’s “a highly credible threat and the statement of a policy.”
I also agree with Ed Feser’s thesis, which is that Operation Epic Fury cannot be justified under Just War doctrine.
My view is that the attack on Iran is a preventive war accompanied by a lot of preemptive war rhetoric in order to make it more acceptable emotionally and ethically.
Just War Theory has space for defensive war and, in some cases, preemptive war, but a preventive war is out of bounds, presumably because it can be abused. A state can use it as a mask to wage a war of aggression or conquest.
Note the title of Ed Feser’s essay you link is, “No, the U.S. has not been at war with Iran for 47 years” (May 11).
Ed was criticizing attempts to “front load” the Iranian threat so as to make it look as though it is more imminent than is. I agree. An Iranian threat is certainly there. It is real, but it has always been in the background, chronic not acute, with “Death to America” blending in as background noise.
The US launched a preventive war to remove a future threat it found intolerable. A future nuclear Iran with modern missiles must be dealt with. The emphasis here is on a future contingency, not on Iran’s past behaviors.
I value Just War Theory for its insights and teachings. But I also accept preventive war on its own terms, fully aware of its downside, but recognizing that states must sometimes do what they must to protect themselves.
What I’ve said here about the US and Iran does not apply to Israel.
For Israel, the Iranian threat is more immediate than it is towards the US. Iranian proxies take the lives of Israelis almost daily. A state of undeclared war has existed between Israel and Iran for several generations and I doubt there are many in Iran’s leadership today who would disagree with that statement.
James,
>>I don’t agree with your statement above that it’s “a highly credible threat and the statement of a policy.”<< Puzzling. You seem to be contradicting what you yourself said before the remark I just quoted.
I’d say a “credible threat” and “a statement of policy” are grounded in a specific circumstance, as when Netanyahu announced a few days ago that if Hezbollah did not stop attacking northern Israel then the Shia neighborhoods of Beirut would be at risk.
That statement contains elements of threat and policy.
But “Death to America” is undefined and emotive. It’s not really a statement of policy as such.
“Death to America” is certainly a sign of malicious intent. The regime believes it’s on a God-ordained mission to subdue the world. But all that’s always been there as a background condition.
Today “Death to America” has become a count in the indictment for war. It’s brought forward an displayed with greater immediacy than it actually has. I just don’t find this line of argument persuasive.
Partial list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_linked_to_the_Islamic_State
And lest we forget:
The Twin Towers were attacked on September 11, 2001, when two hijacked planes crashed into them as part of a coordinated terrorist attack by al-Qaeda, resulting in the collapse of both towers and nearly 3,000 deaths. This event marked one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in history.
Let us grant that “death to America” is not intended to mean genocide of the American people. What it unquestionably does mean – even in the softer form the Islamic Republic prefers in its English proclamations – is total, radical hostility to America as a state and society. It is a declaration of war, and always has been, from the moment it was first spoken.
Put another way – the USA may not have been at war with Iran since our embassy was overrun in 1980. But Iran has been at war with the USA ever since then, without a break. That war has been driving US policy in the Middle East since the Soviet Union fell apart. It was, for instance, the main consideration behind Bush II’s attempt to plant a democracy in Iraq after we’d overthrown Saddam Hussein. Anyone who ignores that war has nothing of value to say about what Trump is doing, because they’re ignoring his actual reasons.
Specifically, Iran’s long war on America makes nonsense of the claim that Trump’s campaign is “preventive war”. We aren’t fighting to prevent Iran from making war on us – that horse left the barn back in 1980. Preventive war is improper because it’s based on speculation about the other state’s intentions; there is no need to speculate about what the Islamic Republic intends, for they have told us in plain terms. The only question is whether we take them seriously.
“War is the remedy our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.” — William Tecumseh Sherman.
Bill,
I’m late to comment here, but I have read Dr. Feser’s piece and EXE’s sophistry a while back. I came away thinking something I’ve noticed of those who oppose the war and any sort of robust military alliance or coordination between us, the United States, and Israel: In much of their bizarre, surreal analysis they treat America and Israel as the ideologically-driven regimes but Iran and its Mullahs are seen as rational actors. Any punitive step America or Israel takes against the Islamic Republic, or its proxies, is taken as provocative and aggressive, while Iran is behaving as any state would — in self defense — when confronted with the Little Satan tail wagging the Big Satan dog for decades. Every move we make is suspect, but everything Iran does is interpreted as reasonable for what any similarly situated country taken to be done in good faith, like these ongoing farcical negotiations, according to these skeptics of the war.
On various occasions, I’ve seen them argue in the same way Ed does here: Iran’s nuclear enrichment past civilian levels is just a negotiating tactic for leverage, you see, and not provocative in itself. Iran also is just protecting its sovereignty, you see, by funding terrorists in neighboring countries, undermining their sovereignty, and not at all an imperialist project in its own right. C’mon, rational regimes who fund militants like the Houthis thousands of miles away from home to threaten shipping in strategic choke points and hold international trade hostage to hurt everyone are just protecting their own borders. It’s not like there are other countries in the region who in response to American hegemony have decided to pursue different strategies in how they deal with our overbearing imperial presence outside of the one Iran has chosen. So I guess that means Iran doesn’t mean “Death to America” in the same way that Hitler didn’t really mean the Jews were literally “lice” or “parasites” — and that was emotive and not directly linked to policy either, I suppose.
To give another example from Ed, he takes Netanyahu as being less trustworthy about Iranian nuclear intentions than the Mullahs because the Mullahs could not actually be interested in obtaining and using nuclear weapons because it would mean they would be nuked backed if these weapons were actually used. Funny, the Saudis take Iranian nuclear ambitions seriously, and they’re not exactly out of central casting for typical Zionist stooges. Even more so, this also like arguing Osama bin Laden would never sign-off on 9/11 because it would inevitably result in our spending years, thousands of more lives, and tons of treasure to hunt down and kill him. Or, even if people like Bin Laden or the Mullahs don’t miscalculate about what they think they can get away with while “resisting” America, maybe the likelihood and extent of our reprisal is not that important in their calculus.
Here’s the rub of it: It’s almost as if jihadists and the theocrats in Iran don’t play by the same natural law and Catholic just war rules that Ed does — that perhaps they have an entirely different tradition of what they consider to be “just war,” and they’re perfectly fine satisfying those less stringent conditions as opposed to those that Ed recognizes as relevant, binding, and rational. For example, has he considered that maybe if the Mullahs did believe they were at war against the United States, a much stronger foe in terms of conventional military capabilities, they wouldn’t come at us head-on by declaring “official” war — their intentions — and thus compelling us to bring our full advantage to bear against them, jeopardizing the whole jihad? That, perhaps they’d reason it’s better to pursue their ends unconventionally, asymmetrically, and without saying they’re at war with us, like what it appears they have done for 50 years? Even if they don’t officially declare war, they’re certainly ok in engaging in what in any other circumstance would be considered as acts of war to our detriment, or at least sponsor others to do it on their behalf. I feel like I’m saying things that should be obvious but apparently aren’t.
Contra James, I think the reason people bring up “Death to America” in these conversations is not so much to justify the war tout court but more so to confront the intransigence of those who, in their rationalizations against the war, fail to accurately assess Iran’s clear bad-faith intentions or see Iran as being any threat whatsoever.
Ben,
Thanks. Very good. Will read carefully later. Here is something from Sam Harris I agree with. I’ll bet you’ve already read it: https://samharris.substack.com/p/why-i-wont-debate-critics-of-israel