Iran and the Theology of Empire

Deus vult -– God wills it -- was the battle cry of the Crusaders when they went against Islam in the 12th century. It is still the battle cry of all modern empires, including ours and that is the problem. President Obama has so far had the good sense to curb our imperial instincts and stay out of that bloody theological mess in Iran.

America is in the business of empire. The Jewish claim to be God’s chosen people is modest compared to American exceptionalism and its belief that we have a mission to remake the world in our economic and political image. This is the force pushing President Obama to tell the Iranians how to run their country.

Empires, by definition, impose their culture and value on others. Big power interference in the internal affairs of others is the modern face of imperialism. Thus it is imperialistic for the US to preach to Iran. We have a bad habit of doing more than just preach.

The US does not approach Iran with clean hands. With an unprecedented candor, President Obama admitted in his speech in Cairo that we had a hand in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran. We did it to protect American and British rights to Iranian oil. The unintended consequence of that CIA debacle was a whole new vocabulary of ayatollahs, sharia, burkas and the seeming acceptance of perpetual war. British Petroleum still lost the oil rights.

Besides, there are no good guys in the competition in Iran. The real power struggle is between two competing groups of clerics. The street demonstrators are mere theater even though people are dying. They are beside the point as long as the clerics continue to hold a monopoly on the use of force.

Even our own history demonstrates the futility of Empire. Originally, our empire was based rather openly on commercial interests. Like every Western empire since the Romans, when our commercial interests are at stake we first punish commercially. If that doesn’t work, we use our military to threaten to or actually invade. Often we use or abuse international organizations that we control.

Our offshore imperialism began in Latin America with what was called “gunboat diplomacy.” That version of empire began with Haiti, Nicaragua, Mexico, Honduras and especially Panama. It continues today with Cuba, Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia and Argentina.

After World War II, however, we tried to mask our commercial interests behind a sanctimonious civic theology of culture and values. This was our version of the British “white man’s burden.”

In the language of slogans, the values we advocated were democracy, which called for free elections, and liberty, which called for private property and markets. We were still very much protecting our sources of raw materials and our export markets. The imperialistic true believer or the naïve would say that it just happened that our commercial interests coincided with our political mission.

This transition from commercialism to political-military empire began with World War I and President Wilson’s Fourteen Points. That was when America first offered its vision of what a free world should look like. At the time, the U.S. Congress was still independent enough to reject that messianic vision.

Now the U.S. Congress is fully on board and continues to fund and vote for the imperial project even though, as in 2006, there is a clear electoral mandate to end it all.

America’s imperial project insists that America has not just the right but the obligation to make its democracy and liberty available to the rest of the world. As the exceptional country, we have a mission to bring freedom to the world. That others would want a theocracy, oligarchy or even, God forbid, socialism is not permitted under our mission statement.

There is nothing new in all of this because mission-driven imperialism is an old story. The sad fact is that every empire claims God is on their side as they subject nations and peoples to their faith systems. Fundamentalist Islam makes exactly the same claim as fundamentalist Americans: Deus vult.

The American project that insists that Iran and Iraq adapt our civic theology of liberty is no different than Islam posting outrageous fatwas or the British Empire picking up the white man’s burden.

Like every other empire, we insist that it is “the end of history” because, at last, we have discovered the self-evident truths that will now guide government for all times.

Thankfully, President Obama in his respect for the Iranian nation is making a change we can truly believe in. Now, if he would just show the same respect for Afghanistan and Iraq and a healthy disrespect for America’s imperial project …