This mass movement against Trump, the protests every day, the resistance if we are to call it that, it’s been great so far. No ban, no wall. Refugees are welcome here. Women’s rights are human rights. LGBTQ rights are human rights. Fighting the Dakota Access pipeline, the Keystone pipeline and other fossil fuel projects. Fighting for public education by calling our senators to make them vote no on Betsy DeVos. Punching Nazis. The left in the U.S has been radicalized and yea. It’s been great, and I know it will continue, but there is always room for improvement. One thing I’d like to see from this resistance movement is that it be firmly anti-war, anti-imperialism, anti-capitalist.
It’s one thing to say, refugees are welcome here, but we also need to be against the thing that creates refugees. War. Imperialism. Colonialism. Capitalism. Welcoming refugees is great, but in an ideal world, people should never have to become refugees in the first place. People should feel safe in their own countries, not only from their own government and military/police, but also from foreign militaries invading or occupying their country, whether overtly or covertly. People should be able to live in safety in their own countries from economic and resource exploitation by the capitalists. So, in addition to resisting what Trump plans to do domestically, we need to resist what Trump plans to do abroad.
It’s pretty obvious Trump wants to go to war with Iran, China and Mexico. That would lead to WW3, but I’ll cover that another time, soon though. In general though, war is awful. As a society, we have been desensitized to war, but war is hell. In war, over 90% of the victims are innocent civilians. The leaders of any country involved in war rarely if ever actually die. The rich elite of every country never fight in a war. They have their bunkers, or they just catch a private jet to some paradise island country. The militaries of every country are made up of the average citizen, poor compared to the rich. Basically, poor people fight the rich man’s war. Every war is for resources for the capitalists. Also, war only creates more refugees.
So, if Trump goes to war with Iran, what happens? One, at least 90% of the victims will be innocent civilians, not even including the natural wildlife. More refugees will be created. But let’s actually talk about Iran, because even liberals are told by Democratic politicians that Iran is evil. Iran, while its government does violate human rights, it is a functioning society, unlike Syria or Iraq or Yemen or Turkey. Tehran, the capital of Iran, is a modern city, with skyscrapers, a subway system, an international airport and freeways. It looks and functions just like an American city. Not to mention, it’s a beautiful city, with millions of people. Iran is also having a high speed rail line built by China as part of China’s Silk Road project. Iran has ski resorts, just like we do. Iran has beautiful beaches. Iran also has gorgeous lakes, rivers, waterfalls, forests, mountains including volcanoes. In any war, it is never just the military facilities that get bombed. Airports get bombed, roads/freeways get bombed, public transit gets bombed, especially railroads. Places of worship get bombed, schools get bombed, hospitals get bombed, sports venues get bombed, food growing areas get bombed, factories get bombed. Forests get bombed, watersheds get bombed, energy facilities get bombed, water cleaning/sewage facilities get bombed. The soil gets poisoned by bombs, and water becomes polluted and toxic. Not only are 90% of victims in war innocent civilians, but the amount of wildlife that gets killed is insane. That’s just during the war, not even including the following years after a war ends. After the war, Iran would be left in shambles. Their society destroyed. Chaos would ensue. Survivors fleeing by the millions, becoming refugees. Also, Tehran and its neighboring region is the heartland of Iran. In any war with Iran, the only way to defeat Iran is to completely and utterly destroy Tehran. As long as Tehran is standing and functioning, Iran can and will keep fighting, because Tehran and its surrounding area in northern and northwestern Iran account for roughly half of the country’s population. If the Iraq War had nearly a million victims, a war with Iran would result in several million victims, at least. I don’t want that to happen.
Now, let’s talk about China. Like Iran, China has a government which has violated human rights, both within China and abroad. However, like Iran, we can’t define China by its rich elite. China has over a billion people. China is a modern developed and still developing country. Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and other modern cities. China has modern airports, just like us. They have skyscrapers, public transit, freeways, bridges, sports venues. China has hosted the summer Olympics. They have big beautiful rivers, mountains, lakes, forests, beaches and so forth. They have lots of natural wildlife. China also has the world’s biggest network of high speed rail. America doesn’t even have high speed rail! Now, with China, winning a war against them without using nuclear weapons would be next to impossible. It isn’t impossible, but it’s close. You’d have to nearly completely destroy the three major metropolitan areas, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, to prevent them from having the means to fight back. Just so everyone knows, the Hong Kong megaregion has nearly 120 million people. The Shanghai megaregion has nearly 140 million people. The Beijing megaregion is about to have nearly 130 million people. I don’t want to say how many innocent Chinese civilians would die in a war by America led by Trump. It’s a number too high to imagine. I don’t want to imagine what that number would be. The truth is though, as big as the U.S military is, we don’t have the forces to actually defeat China in a conventional war. Nobody would win, it’d drain our resources and our troops would drop like flies too. We’d have to institute the draft again and that wouldn’t be enough either. China can only be brought down and under control now by nuclear weapons, and they have nukes too, hundreds of them, so it’d just be mutually assured destruction. Nobody wins. The White House has a nuclear bunker though, and the rich elite have nuclear bunkers as well, and they have mansions in remote places that wouldn’t get nuked, like New Zealand. So again, poor people fight & die in the rich man’s war. Those who start wars never actually face the consequences of them.
Now, onto Mexico. Mexico is still developing, but it has quite a few developed cities. Mexico City is just like an American city, skyscrapers, an airport, public transit system and all that. Mexico as a country has all that we have too, like mountains, volcanoes, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, beaches and more. One of my sisters spent her honeymoon in Mexico. As Mexico shares a border with us, there are wildlife corridors that cross the border which are already impacted by the border fence, although the fence doesn’t cover the whole border like Trump’s wall would. Just as with any war, the victims of a war with Mexico would be the innocent civilians, not the Mexican capitalists supposedly taking U.S jobs, when really the Mexican capitalists are just part of the global capitalist class that exploits everyone, but that’s something to write about another time. A war with Mexico would be slightly different than a war with Iran or China. It’d be heavily fought on the ground with the army, as Mexico has a lot of mountain terrain, making it difficult for the air force. Mexico’s biggest cities are mostly inland, and Mexico has mountains on both its west and east coasts, making the navy ineffectual. Since a war with Mexico would mostly be fought on the ground, it’d make it longer and more difficult to win. It’d essentially be another Iraq, an occupation, except it’d be worse than Iraq. Their army knows the terrain, so they would be able to use guerilla tactics. Trump’s U.S forces would have to march all the way to Mexico City and surround it in order to make them surrender. Getting to Mexico City would take years because of all the battles we’d face along the way. The military of Mexico is no pushover. One other note with Mexico, they have defense treaties with many Latin American countries. Latin America has always feared a U.S military invasion, for their resources, so most of them have defense treaties with Mexico. Mexico is their first line of defense against the U.S, so Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile and more have promised to send their forces to assist Mexico if the U.S were to ever invade. So yea, a war with Mexico would be a major war with major loss of life.
Lastly, I just want to say, Iran, China and Mexico are NOT our enemy. The people of those countries just want the same things we want. A home, clean air to breathe, clean water, healthy food, healthcare, to love freely, justice and so on. They are good people. So while we protest against refugee and Muslim bans, lets also protest and resist any and all wars that Trump wants to start. At the end of the day, we aren’t Americans or Iranian’s or Chinese or Mexican’s or whatever other nation-state with artificial borders dividing us, we’re all human beings.
adamkendall2 