Thanks to a combination of American technology, Israeli pluck and brilliant intelligence gathering, Iran’s supreme leader, one of the world’s most evil dictators, is gone.
Defeating the regime, however, will require still more.
Since World War II, the United States has repeatedly tried to use its economic and technological edge to win wars without substantial loss of life. Again and again it has failed.
During the Korean War, America dominated the skies. That dominance played a key role in the war—but it wasn’t enough to win it. Over 36,000 Americans and 137,000 South Korean soldiers died to achieve the stalemate that ended the war. A decade later, America sent 1,500 men to the Bay of Pigs in Cuba to overthrow a regime that had 300,000 troops, hoping the oppressed populace would rise and help. It didn’t.
America committed many more troops to Vietnam and suffered many more casualties. Even then, it failed to win. In Afghanistan, America defeated the Taliban on the battlefield, only to withdraw years later and hand power back to the Taliban.
President Donald Trump has launched a series of short, bold, dramatic military interventions of a kind that only the U.S. could pull off: bombing Iranian nuclear sites last summer, capturing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, and now helping Israel decapitate Iran’s leadership structure.
These have been much more successful than debacles like the Bay of Pigs. But there is nothing yet to show that they are true victories that will produce lasting change. Why?
Science is the promised solution for so many of our problems: poverty, disease, peace—even war. Herbert W. Armstrong called science a “false messiah.” This is equally true of the American military. Whereas the Americans and before them the British once trusted in God for victories, now we trust in technology.
In World War II, America suffered close to half a million deaths. That huge number was minor compared to other nations. Still, naturally, the nation did not want to go through anything like that again. So it poured its economic, educational and cultural efforts into a solution: technology.
Science in the form of aerospace technologies, intelligence gathering, precision-guided missiles, satellite imagery, signal jamming, drones and now artificial intelligence held out the promise that America could win without a major commitments of manpower or hefty death tolls.
Science did, in fact, give America a tool it could use to guarantee victory in most wars, with little cost to its own men: the nuclear bomb. But given its terrifying destructive power, leaders have recoiled from using it.
Ironically, the presence of this option worsened the problem of America’s flagging will. During the Korean War, many U.S. generals believed they could have won a total victory—taking all of the north—but doing so would have required greater manpower and a death toll closer to that of World War II. Could a U.S. president ask that of the nation when he had a bomb that could end the war without major American loss of life? Yet President Harry Truman feared using a nuclear bomb, with all the resulting death and unknowable global reactions.
What the Soviet Union might do in Europe was another important concern. The result was that America neither used the bomb nor rushed in more conventional forces. The Korean War was the first limited war in American history—and the first time the U.S. finished without a victory.
But if science could provide one war-ending weapon, could it provide another? One with a less terrifying death toll? That question has spurred the development of miniature nuclear bombs, bunker-busting bombs, stealth bombers, precision-guided missiles, intelligence services and special forces. Some of these have been used impressively at times, and the cost in blood, if not treasure, has been lowered. Still, full victory has not been achieved.
Why?
America lacks, first, the morality and, second, the righteous will to win a major engagement. So it tries to deal with the effects the same way it deals with other issues: It turns to its false messiahs of money, science and technology.
The goal is to enable a divided and unconvinced nation to win a partial victory at low cost. But true victory would demand tackling the cause of the problem.
America’s lack of will is a disease of the spirit. It is a matter of the human psyche. It can’t be solved by scientific experimentation.
The Bible explains clearly.
God warns in Leviticus 26:19 that if the nation sins, “I will break the pride of your power ….” God and His blessings were the true source of America’s strength, prosperity and technological edge. But the nation has not obeyed Him, so its unity and fighting spirit have been broken. That technological edge has enabled a weak-willed America to remain a major power for decades. But it has not won full victories—and it will not do so now.
In fact, the Bible warns that the nation’s high-tech systems will fail. “They have blown the trumpet, even to make all ready; but none goeth to the battle …” (Ezekiel 7:14).
Deuteronomy 28, a parallel to Leviticus 26, warns that “thy high and fenced walls … wherein thou trustedst” shall be destroyed (verse 52). America is trusting the wrong messiahs.
However, the Bible holds out the true hope. To fight and win, we must obey God, keep His Sabbaths and other laws, and trust in Him and Him alone for protection. God says that if the U.S. and the other modern nations of Israel (a name that specifically means “overcomer with God”) will do that, then “five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight …” (Leviticus 26:8).
In an evil world, a nation will have deadly enemies. Turning to God in repentance is the only sure way to guarantee victory and national survival. This bombardment of Iran is no exception. Without repentance, this will be, at best, a temporary victory.