Countercurrents:

Nader Terani

We bombed Iran and, despite a temporary cessation of hostilities, it’s likely that President Donald Trump and his counterpart in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, intend to drag the United States into yet another destabilizing effort in the Middle East, perhaps the most dangerous one yet. As an Iranian American, I feel as if my greatest fears are now being realized.

Like many Iranian Americans, I love this country and the many blessings that it’s provided my family — so much so that I proudly chose to wear the uniform of its Navy. I’ll never forget the immense sense of pride I felt, on July 31st, 1996, when I was sworn into the United States Navy, or the unparalleled sense of responsibility I experienced when I wore my uniform for the first time as an American sailor graduating from boot camp at the Recruit Training Center in Great Lakes, Illinois, in 1997. I then had the honor of being selected as the first Iranian American to serve as a member of the United States Navy Presidential Honor Guard in Washington, D.C. And on every one of those occasions, my loved ones, Iranian immigrants all, proudly stood by my side, beaming with joy as I embarked on what I viewed as a sacred commitment to serve the nation that I love.

We Have to Remember Who We’re Meant to Be

Like many immigrant families, mine came to the United States in search of peace, prosperity, and the possibility of becoming part of the fabric of the country that had given the world the Bill of Rights and the sacred tenet of “equal justice under the law”; the country that had given history George Washington, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., among others; the nation that had served as a safe harbor for German refugees like Albert Einstein and Hollywood film director Billy Wilder fleeing Nazi persecution; the great nation that did indeed free the world from the scourge of Hitler and the Third Reich in World War II, and later landed the first men on the surface of the moon. No nation has had so much potential to do good in the world as we do in the United States of America. Our Founding Fathers, imperfect as they might have been, passed on to us the proposition that liberty and human dignity are anything but idle words — that they are, in fact, fundamental human values written in the very hearts of every person. In short, they passed on to us a promise: that all men, every soul, in fact, is endowed by our Creator with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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