Chinooks and crannies

The other day, just as our recitation for Introduction to International Politics began, a good friend of mine asked me a very troubling question. We had been discussing what it would have meant to join the military—the commitment, the particular education, and the immense personal growth. It occurred to us that had we signed up a few years ago, had we been just a few years older, deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan would have been a very real possibility. I remarked that it would have been personally difficult to justify fighting in Iraq given the nature of the engagement. But my friend countered with an even more troubling scenario: What if Iran and the United States had gone to war?

As an American born to Iranian parents, I was immediately made uncomfortable by that question. As a U.S. citizen, I felt I should be ready to fight tooth and nail for the country that has given my family so much. But for a person with strong links to a distinctly Iranian culture, identity, and family history, it was an unfathomable prospect. My initial reaction was that I would just move to Switzerland and abstain from the conflict or do something of the sort, but to my friend, this was unpatriotic. He suggested that because I am American, and because I have never even set foot on Iranian soil (much to my chagrin), I owe nothing to the Iranian government and should be willing to fight. But on the other hand, I have a command of the language, I am imbued with Iranian traits, and, in a sense, I am fractionally American—to the extent I am fractionally Iranian. I can see myself dying for the U.S., but I cannot see myself killing an Iranian.

My inability to answer this question convincingly, or to rationalize my indecision, has troubled me for days. War with Iran is a possibility, however remote. In fact, one could consider the sanctions currently levied against Iran as a form of economic warfare. Iran is lambasted in the American press in largely hyperbolic, factually dubious, and politically motivated terms. The country is often invoked by campus groups as the be-all-end-all of regressive and violent states, with a government hell-bent on destroying all that is good and holy in the world. It is the real-world example that outspoken students use in their political science classes.

What country is seeking nuclear weapons? Iran.

What country wants to destroy Israel? Iran.

What country funds terrorism? Iran.

Bravo! The professor always smiles and agrees, which is troubling insomuch as the agreement is a tacit endorsement of a perversion of the truth. But I digress—even if all of these villainous qualities could be fairly ascribed to Iran, I still don’t think I could fight.

It occurs to me that there is a type of student at Columbia, of an international background, who is “dislocated.” He can’t be patriotic in the typical sense, for there is no single state to which he is loyal. If you were born in China, raised in Australia, and schooled in the United States, which country, if any, would you defend to the death? The likely answer is none of them, and the very question would likely be discomforting. That is the particular problem with war—it requires you to choose sides in an age where ambiguous identity is an increasing norm. Some might say it is a waste of time to worry about this and that the likelihood of having a gun thrust in your hands and your quaking self shipped out in a Chinook helicopter is slim to none. But the whole point of these thought experiments is to take our notions of allegiance to their final end, to ask ourselves if truly “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (it is sweet and proper to die for the fatherland). The answer, it seems, is conditional.

Insofar as we are all moving toward a more stateless experience—living in multiple countries—speaking multiple languages, and holding multiple citizenships, we become less able to “pick a side” in the event of war. Perhaps, then, ambiguity is a protection against war. If our convictions toward violent conflict are tempered by a paralysis of allegiance, then, presumably, discounting patriotism through dislocation can serve to lower our appetite for war. If we are less willing to say we are categorically American, Egyptian, or Chinese in the sense that goes beyond the designations of a passport, we are also going to be less willing to arbitrarily privilege one state over others in our considerations of conflict. Determining our allegiances in war would become less a question of which state to support and more a question of which ideas to support—a distinction that is often taken for granted. So while for many of us there is no state we would die for, there are certainly ideas that merit self-sacrifice. Patriotism ought to be more about the maintenance of those ideas than the preservation of a particular state. It seems too often we lose sight of the difference.

Esfandyar Batmanghelidj is a Columbia College sophomore. He is a member of the rugby team. Institution Rules runs alternate Thursdays.