Christian nationalism's role in the war with Iran - and U.S. LGBTQ+ rights

"The strike was part of a widening military campaign carried out jointly by the United States and Israel against Iran, a conflict that has already spread across multiple countries and killed hundreds of civilians. Events like this should force a moment of moral clarity. The deliberate or reckless killing of civilians in pursuit of political or religious goals has a name in both international law and ordinary moral language. We call it terrorism."

"Pete Hegseth, the United States secretary of defense, has spent years portraying global politics as a civilizational struggle between the West and Islam. In his book American Crusade, he writes that his "planetary purpose" is to destroy Islamist enemies and urges Americans to see themselves as modern crusaders defending a threatened civilization."

"In that worldview, conflict is not primarily about diplomacy or competing national interests. It is a moral confrontation between civilizations in which compromise begins to look like weakness and coexistence like surrender. Once violence is framed this way, restraint becomes difficult to justify."

A military airstrike struck a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran on Saturday morning, killing between 165 and 180 people, predominantly children aged seven to twelve. This attack represents part of an expanding joint U.S.-Israel military campaign against Iran that has spread across multiple countries and caused hundreds of civilian casualties. The campaign is increasingly framed by U.S. officials, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, as a civilizational conflict between the West and Islam rather than a political or diplomatic matter. This framing, rooted in concepts like Hegseth's "planetary purpose" to destroy Islamist enemies, fundamentally changes how violence is justified and understood, transforming what would otherwise be termed terrorism into strategic defense.

Read at Advocate.com