A plea for rhetorical self-restraint, against triumphalism

I published a piece today in Meridian Magazine under the title of “The Tragedy of Nauvoo: Remembering the Lost City of the Latter-day Saints.”  I hope that you’ll take a look at it.  I appreciate the beautiful photographs that accompany the article, which were (I assume) taken by Scot Facer Proctor.

The teaser for Episode 7 of Becoming Brigham (Becoming Brigham TRAILER—”Young Brigham Young,” Part Two) has now been posted.  The full episode will appear on Monday.

And you may be aware by now that Episode 6 of Becoming Brigham is already up online.  If not, let me be the first to inform you that it is: Becoming Brigham, Episode 6—”Young Brigham Young,” Part One.   And all six of the currently published installments are available at the home page of the series, which is becomingbrigham.com.  We intend — with possibly one or two exceptions down the line, when we may do something a little bit different — that a new episode go up each week.

“An American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” said Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth today, in announcing the destruction of the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena. “Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death. The first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War Two. Like in that war, back when we were still the War Department. We are fighting to win.”

Joining Secretary Hegseth for the announcement, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the Iranian vessel was “effectively neutralized” in a Navy “fast attack” using a single Mark 48 torpedo. He added that the U.S. Navy achieved “immediate effect, sending the warship to the bottom of the sea.”

In a separate incident, Secretary Hegseth said, the U.S. Navy sank another Iranian military vessel, the corvette class missile ship Soleimani, which apparently went down near the Iranian shore in the Strait of Hormuz.  The Soleimani was named for Qasem Soleimani, who, from 1998 until his assassination by the United States in a 2020 drone strike, was the commander of the Quds Force, a division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).  (Giving it its Arabic definite article, which Persian tends not to use, the term al-Quds — “The Holy” — is a very common Arabic/Islamic name for Jerusalem.)  In that role with the IRGC, Soleimani was primarily responsible for extraterritorial and clandestine military operations, and he played a key part in the Syrian civil war.

“The Iranian Navy rests at the bottom of the Persian Gulf,” said Secretary Hegseth. “Combat ineffective, decimated, destroyed, defeated. Pick your adjective.  In fact, last night we sunk their prize ship, the Soleimani. Looks like POTUS got him twice. Their navy, not a factor. Pick your adjective. It is no more.”

Regarding another story, Secretary Hegseth announced to reporters today that the leader of an Iranian unit that may have been behind an attempted 2024 plot to assassinate President Donald Trump has been killed: “Yesterday, the leader of the unit who attempted to assassinate President Trump has been hunted down and killed.  Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh.”

And, in a Sunday telephone interview with ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl, President Trump himself mentioned the alleged assassination plot while discussing the U.S. and Israeli strike that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei: “I got him before he got me,” Trump said. “They tried twice. Well, I got him first.”

Please don’t get me wrong.  I’m not a pacifist.  I’m not a leftist.  I’m pleased that the Iranian Navy will probably be blocked from blocking the Strait of Hormuz.  I’m anything but a fan of Ali Khamenei, Qasem Soleimani, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or the Islamic Republic of Iran.  The theocratic thugs in Tehran have oppressed and murdered their own people, fostered untold grief and violence across the Middle East and beyond, and covered themselves in innocent blood.  I’m perfectly happy to see many of them heading for the exits, and I would be delighted if Iran were to rise to the freedom and prosperity that it deserves and that would be worthy of the glorious Persian past.

But I’ve been put off by rhetoric about “quiet death,” “last laughs,” “I got him first,”and “Looks like POTUS got him twice.”  (And, I confess, I don’t like Secretary Hegseth’s tattoos.)  War is a grim business.  A necessity, it can be argued, but an occasion for neither self-satisfaction nor gloating.  Every human death is a tragedy.  Even the worst of these people are children of God, our brothers and sisters for whom Christ died. Moreover, even on the level of mere pragmatic self-interest, the Iranian regime still retains some degree of power to kill, hurt, and maim.  We have taken out their leaders.  It’s not impossible that they could yet do the same to some of ours and wound us in our own cities and homes.  We must be wary of hubris.

In the past, when some notable murderer has been executed, I’ve been appalled to see news footage of loud tailgate parties near the prisons where the executions have taken place.  Even if I regard the execution as just, I’m repulsed by the idea of celebrating it.

Do you remember, toward the end of the Book of Mormon, when the retreating Nephites experienced a last, brief, and ultimately illusory round of military successes?

And it came to pass that we did contend with an army of thirty thousand against an army of fifty thousand. And it came to pass that we did stand before them with such firmness that they did flee from before us.

And it came to pass that when they had fled we did pursue them with our armies, and did meet them again, and did beat them; nevertheless the strength of the Lord was not with us; yea, we were left to ourselves, that the Spirit of the Lord did not abide in us; therefore we had become weak like unto our brethren. (Mormon 2:25-26)

And now, because of this great thing which my people, the Nephites, had done, they began to boast in their own strength, and began to swear before the heavens that they would avenge themselves of the blood of their brethren who had been slain by their enemies.

And they did swear by the heavens, and also by the throne of God, that they would go up to battle against their enemies, and would cut them off from the face of the land.

And it came to pass that I, Mormon, did utterly refuse from this time forth to be a commander and a leader of this people, because of their wickedness and abomination. (Mormon 3:9-11)

Personally, I found the videos of the sinking of the Dena rather sickening. I’m told that most Iranian Navy personnel are draftees.  A frigate such as the Dena is typically manned by a crew of approximately two hundred sailors; a corvette class missile ship like the Soleimani commonly has a crew of between forty and a hundred.  I suspect that their deaths were not “quiet.”

After the drowning of the pursuing army of Pharaoh in the Red Sea, the Israelites rejoiced at their deliverance:

And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.  And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.  (Exodus 15:20-21)

This is a very human reaction.  But the rabbis say that the angels, observing the destruction of the Egyptians on that occasion, also broke into song although they should have known better:  God sees the angels’ rejoicing, and he isn’t pleased. “My creatures are drowning in the sea,” he says, “and you sing songs.”  As the rabbis put it, “The Holy One, Blessed be He, does not rejoice over the fall of the wicked.”  (See the Midrash, from Megilla 10; Sanhedrin 39b; Pesikta de- Rav Kahana [ed. S. Buber, p. 189a])

In my view, one of the great chapters of scripture, and one to which I often return, is Ezekiel 33.  Here, I quote verse eleven from it:

As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live.

But similar messages are found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, as well.  A notable case is found in the story of Jonah, which illustrates God’s care even for Israel’s worst enemies.  In that story, the prophet Jonah is sent to preach repentance to the people of Nineveh, the capital of the brutal and imperialistic Assyrian Empire, and to warn them against pending destruction.  Famously but vainly, he tries to escape and to evade God’s call.  However, in the end he very grudgingly fulfills his assignment and then, to his disgust, watches as the people of Nineveh repent and are spared:

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.  And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.  Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.  Then said the Lord, Doest thou well to be angry? . . . And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand?  (Jonah 4:1-4, 11)

I find myself thinking of the great Nephite commander Moroni who, brilliant military leader though he was, didn’t rejoice in the death of his enemies:

Now Moroni, when he saw their terror, commanded his men that they should stop shedding their blood. And it came to pass that they did stop and withdrew a pace from them. And Moroni said unto Zerahemnah: Behold, Zerahemnah, that we do not desire to be men of blood. Ye know that ye are in our hands, yet we do not desire to slay you. (Alma 43:54-44:1)

And I think of Moses 7, in the Pearl of Great Price, which I regard as one of the great passages of scripture given to us through the Prophet Joseph Smith.  In that chapter, Enoch is astonished at seeing God weep:

How is it thou canst weep?

I find myself thinking, too, of Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem “Recessional,” which was written in 1897 for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and which will be familiar to some from the current Latter-day Saint hymnal.  It offers a solemn warning against imperial arrogance, urging humility and remembrance of God even at the zenith of the British Empire’s power:

God of our fathers, known of old,

   Lord of our far-flung battle-line,

Beneath whose awful Hand we hold

   Dominion over palm and pine—

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;

   The Captains and the Kings depart:

Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,

   An humble and a contrite heart.

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;

   On dune and headland sinks the fire:

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

   Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose

   Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,

Such boastings as the Gentiles use,

   Or lesser breeds without the Law—

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust

   In reeking tube and iron shard,

All valiant dust that builds on dust,

   And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,

For frantic boast and foolish word—

Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!