Fatwa Tuesday

Dear Mr. President,

Here’s something from Salman Rushdie’s new book, Joseph Anton, his memoir of the period of his life when there was a Fatwa issued for his assassination: “Khomeini was …a head of state ordering the murder of a citizen of another state, over whom he had no jurisdiction, and he had assassins at his service who had been used before against ‘enemies’ of the Iranian Revolution, including those who lived outside Iran.” Substitute Obama for Khomeini and the U.S. for Iranian Revolution and you get exactly the same thing you’re doing today in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc. Back in 1989 when Khomeini issued his Fatwa against Rushdie, I thought, my God, how can this be happening in 1989? What drives fanatics to these extremes? And yet here we are in 2012 and every Tuesday, you issue Fatwas against how many ‘terrorist enemies of the U.S. of A? Fanaticism in the name of religion or patriotism or revenge or terrorism, whatever the concocted reason, is no reason for what you do in your Kill Lists and Drone Strikes and Targeted Assassinations. They are just as stupid, barbaric and misguided as Khomeini’s Fatwa against Rushdie in 1989. How has America come to this? How did we elect a man we thought moral, courageous, a man who valued the same principles we valued but turned into a cold blooded killer fanatic like Khomeini? The toll of the war may not be in the millions as it was from Hitler’s misguided fanaticism—a pure Aryan society—but basically, the issue is the same; fanaticism, cold-blooded butchery of innocents, the false sense of power and right-ness, the sense of Manifest Destiny and Empire, is as dumb as any dumb war in history—and they have all been dumb wars, Mr. President, even your Afghan war, and especially your Drone Wars of aggression that have killed hundreds, thousands of people by edict, by Fatwa, by misguided aggrandizement, and finally, by money and politics, the driver of all wars. Last night, I had a conversation with a Korean War vet, a Conscientious Objector who served as a Medic in Korea, who talked about the butchery of young men, the unthinking following of orders by soldiers to kill their fellow man – “but I knew I could never, under any circumstances kill a man and I didn’t… I had to fight some off and I hurt some real bad, but I never killed anyone… There is never any excuse to kill a man, there is never a reason for war.” Think about it, Mr. President. Right now, you’re in the same league with Khomeini.