From Point No Point to Deception Pass: Innocent victims are casualties of war waged to distract

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, March 11, 2026

Sometimes no words can really describe the depth of a tragedy. Yet words are needed. So that we won’t turn away in fear or disgust, or in order to preserve some illusion of a world that is better, more loving and kind than this one.

Recently, 175 Iranian school girls were killed by a bomb that was part of an attack on Iran ordered by our American president. Now, once again faced with tragic deaths, U.S. government officials are asking us to deny what we see with our eyes and to refuse to acknowledge the ache in our hearts. After all, they would argue, there will always be unfortunate mistakes and accidents in the fog of war.

That, however, is a prime reason that war must always be a last resort after all the alternatives have been thoroughly exhausted. The alternatives clearly were not exhausted in this case, and over two thirds of Americans do not approve of this president’s decision to take us to war against Iran. And in the case of the bombing of the school, we are expected to put it out of our minds because we must not come to doubt that our military uses only the most sophisticated and reliable of precision targeting systems that should make such mistakes extremely rare.

What is too rarely said, however, is that many of our political leaders have been corrupted by obscenely wealthy businessmen profiting off U.S. military spending. And on the other side of the equation we have credible reports of military commanders calling this latest conflict a holy war. One is reported to have said that “the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that President Donald Trump was anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark His return to earth.”

Throughout history, leaders have tried to convince their people that they had God on their side in a war. And once again we have military commanders who invoke the name of the peace loving Christ to justify the launch of a war of aggression. In this case, one in which the first day of combat included one of the worst slaughters of the innocent, school girls reportedly 7-12 years old, in our nation’s history. Which is to say a lot, given our military history, that includes the Cherokee Trail of Tears, the Andersonville prison camp, and the Wounded Knee and the MyLai massacres.

The president of the United States, single handedly, without Congressional consultation or approval, launched this latest war in part to divert public attention from a number of issues. His continual lies concerning the real condition of the health and wealth of the American people are among the most obvious of these. But there is an even more troubling suspicion that he is trying to divert attention from a horrible growing personal scandal. It appears that he along with friends and wealthy business and political associates have likely been part of a group engaged in pedophelia for pleasure, profit and political manipulation.

This scandal has grown into an international affair involving British royalty, former Scandinavian prime ministers, Saudi princes, along with American billionaires and the privileged and elite from varied spheres, including academia, the military, government and industry. A number of countries where fundamental decency and the rule of law still prevail have begun to arrest prominent members of their societies who have been identified to be part of this degenerate circle.

Only in America, the center of this scandal, has no one been charged with crimes. One lone depraved woman sits in prison today, and the president has made special efforts to ease her prison stay and may yet pardon her. The president is clearly the one who has also done everything in his power to impede the investigation into this criminal ring. The obvious explanation for this is that he and many of his friends and associates would very possibly suffer arrest and imprisonment if the full truth of the alleged rape and abuse of children were to come to light.

The Civil War and World War II remain examples of wars that most Americans today would still say were worth fighting. One ended slavery the other prevented Nazis and fascists from enslaving us all. But there have been other wars that many or most Americans wish we had never entered into. World War I, the Vietnam War, the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and now this war on Iran that only some 27 percent of Americans support.

The sad fact is that it is a war that mostly fits the description of war described by one of America’s most honored Marine commanders, Major General Smedley Butler, who, following World War I, said: “War is a racket. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

Michael Seraphinoff is a Whidbey Island resident, a former professor at Skagit Valley College and academic consultant to the International Baccalaureate Organization.