My wife wanted to move to Greenfield. When we came to look around the city, I saw a group of people standing on the Common carrying a variety of signs. It was the Saturday Vigil for Peace and Justice that had started nearly four years earlier, just before George W. Bush led our country to invade and destroy our former client state, Iraq. For me, the vigil was a big reason to move to Greenfield.
In the 1960s, I would never have thought of passively holding a sign as a political action. I was more into marches and demonstrations, strikes and civil disobedience, but now I understand that witness can serve a valuable role. I’ve come to love the people I meet there. When I first started to attend, I would pick a different sign from the bag each Saturday. I wanted to find a sign that fit my feelings and that might convince others of its message. I tried a lot of different signs. I even made a sign from the good ol’ ’60s. It said “Make Love Not War.” But for the last six or seven years, I’ve been holding a sign that says “No War with Iran.”
That sign has grown on me as I’ve learned more about Iran. I remember an image I once saw on television. It was a circle of floating bodies from the Iranian Air flight 655 that was shot down over the straits of Hormuz by the USS Vincennes guided missile cruiser on July 3, 1988. The Airbus A300 carried 290 civilians. It had just taken off for a flight to Dubai and was over Iranian airspace at the time. The Vincennes was in Iranian coastal waters. The picture was striking because the force of the blast had ripped the clothing from the bodies and they were all floating naked.
Vice President George H. W. Bush was quoted in Newsweek as saying, “I’ll never apologize for the United States Government. Never, no matter what the facts are.” The US government never apologized, but finally paid compensation of $62 million in 1996 to settle a suit brought by the Iranian government before the World Court. The images, only shown briefly on TV, were something I’ll never be able to forget.
But the worst thing that the U.S. did to Iran was to overthrow its democratically elected secular government in 1953. That was for oil, of course, and the Iranians suffered under the rule of the Shah for more than 25 years until they finally overthrew him and established their Islamic state. On September 22, 1980, shortly after the revolution, Iraq, armed by the U.S. and led by Sadam Hussein, invaded Iran and started a war that lasted eight years and killed a million people. Iraq killed hundreds of thousands using poison gas made with expertise and ingredients supplied by the U.S. Although weaker initially, Iran overcame Iraq’s superior military and was winning the war when the U.N. finally ended it in August, 1988, a month after the Vincennes attack.
For a long time now, the U.S. has claimed that Iran is the worldwide center of terrorism. But these claims are based on considering the organizations Hamas and Hezbollah to be terrorist organizations. Neither group has ever committed a terrorist act outside the Middle East. Hamas is an enemy of Israel, and won an internationally supervised election in Gaza. They organized the defense of Gaza against Israel’s two recent invasions, in which Israel’s vast military power nearly destroyed the tiny area.
Hezbollah is based in Lebanon and was responsible for driving Israel out in 2006 after Israel invaded. Both organizations are supported by Iran, and like Iran, they are majority Shiite Muslims. The groups that have attacked western nations, Al-Qaida and ISIS, are Sunni Muslims and have never been affiliated with Iran.
So in my view, Iran should not be called a terrorist state. Iran, once known as Persia, may be the oldest nation in the world. It was not one of the nations created when the British Empire chopped up the Middle East into separate nation states. Iran has never invaded other countries. We should respect them. That’s why I hold a sign at the Saturday Vigil that says, “No War with Iran.”
Scott is a retired physics teacher who moved to Greenfield in 2006.