Soldier Of Love

To the People of America: Remember Columbine? Sandy Hook? Parkland? Uvalde? Children gunned down in their schools: twenty first-graders in Newtown, nineteen fourth-graders in Uvalde. The violence was domestic, the dead counted in dozens, yet the sorrow, anger and resentment endure. Now imagine the killer was a foreign power, not a deranged gunman, and the dead numbered over a hundred, in one school, one morning: small coffins in rows, parents searching rubble for a shoe. Imagine what you would feel toward that country's leaders and everyone responsible. That is what happened in Minab and Lamerd, Iran. On February 28, the very first day of the war, U.S. missiles struck a primary school in Minab. 168 children were torn apart, most of them between seven and twelve years old. They had come to school to learn, to laugh, to dream about their futures. They never came home. A UN fact-finding mission found reasonable grounds to believe the strike constituted a U.S. war crime. There is no indication that the Pentagon’s own report will ever be released. Trump has said it may never be known who was at fault, adding, "I don't think it was us." He is lying. This is the president who boasted that his Space Force could learn the name, address and badge number of anyone approaching an Iranian nuclear site. His military can identify a stranger by badge number, yet cannot say who destroyed a school? His own officials, American media reported, knew within days how it happened. That afternoon, hours after Minab, U.S. missiles hit Lamerd, in Fars province: a sports hall where girls were at volleyball practice, a school, and nearby homes. Twenty-one died, the youngest aged two; as many as 170 were wounded. The New York Times identified the weapon as the U.S. Army's new Precision Strike Missile. Last month in Lamerd, residents and officials told me the director of the Ghalamchi Institute, an educational center, had heard about Minab and sent more than 100 students home about an hour before the strike. Had he not, Lamerd's toll might have exceeded Minab's. The U.S. military did not know they had left, and nothing suggests it would have held fire: Minab had not given it pause. On November 3, you vote. I will not tell you for whom. I ask only this: raise Minab and Lamerd at town halls, at press conferences, and with every canvasser at your door. Ask candidates to pledge to demand the Pentagon's findings, sworn congressional hearings, an independent inquiry, and War Crimes Act prosecutions of those responsible, however senior. Vote for those who pledge; hold them to it after election day. You are a people of values and faith, and Scripture is plain: "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground" (Genesis 4:10). Those children cannot speak. You can. Stay silent, and one day your own children will ask you why. In the age of social media, nothing stays hidden forever. They will see the images, read the accounts, and want to know what you did when more than a hundred children were killed. They will ask why you did not care, why you looked away, and how you could cast your vote without demanding answers. @mtgreenee