POWER WITHOUT MERCY

When a Superpower’s Strength Outgrows the Mercy That Should Restrain It

I have been quiet too long. Silence can be a kind of complicity, a way of letting the powerful believe their actions carry no witness and provoke no moral accounting. But there comes a moment when the weight of events presses against the ribs, when the news scrolls like a ledger of avoidable suffering, and when a citizen, any citizen, must speak.

We are living through such a moment now.

For months, the United States has waged what many have called an undeclared war against Iran. The headlines arrive with the rhythm of a drumbeat: schoolchildren killed in airstrikes; senior Iranian leaders targeted and assassinated; peace negotiators bombed while carrying proposals meant to stop the bloodshed.

In the Strait of Hormuz, American and Iranian vessels face each other in a tense maritime standoff, each side daring the other to blink. Oil tankers idle like hostages. The world holds its breath.

And over it all, the American President issues threats that echo across continents, threats to “annihilate” an ancient civilization, one whose poetry predates the English
language, whose cities were old when Rome was young, whose memory stretches
back to the earliest chapters of human time. These are not the words of
diplomacy. They are the words of a nation forgetting its own history, its own
fragility, its own moral obligations.

Meanwhile, the American stock market rises and falls like a fever chart. A single mention of ceasefire sends it soaring; a single threat sends it plunging. Oil prices
convulse. Working families feel the tremors in their grocery bills, their heating costs, and their commutes. The global poor, who have no voice in these decisions, pay the highest price. A blockade in the Persian Gulf becomes a tax on a mother in Detroit, a farmer in Kenya, a bus driver in São Paulo.

This is what power without mercy looks like. It is not a strength. It is not leadership. It is a form of blindness.

Nations, like individuals, reveal their character in moments of crisis. When a country possesses overwhelming military might, the temptation is always to use it, to believe that force can solve what diplomacy cannot, that threats can replace negotiation, that fear can substitute for respect.

But power without mercy becomes reckless. Power without accountability becomes dangerous. Power without imagination cannot see the humanity of others.

We have seen this pattern before in American history: the belief that overwhelming force can bend the world to our will. It has never worked for long. It has always left scars on foreign soil, on American soldiers, on our national conscience.

Iran is not merely a geopolitical adversary. It is a civilization. Its poets Hafez, Rumi, and Ferdowsi shaped the spiritual vocabulary of half the world. Its cities, Shiraz, Isfahan, and Tehran, carry the architectural memory of empires and revolutions. Its people have endured invasions, dynasties, sanctions, and isolation, yet they remain rooted in a cultural lineage older than the United States by thousands of years.

To threaten such a civilization with annihilation is not only morally indefensible; it is historically absurd. Civilizations do not vanish because a modern nation wills it. They endure. They outlast the empires that try to dominate them. They survive the bluster of presidents and the ambitions of generals.

Every blockade in the Strait of Hormuz sends shockwaves through the global economy. Every drone strike reverberates through markets. Every threat from the White House becomes a tremor in the price of oil, a tightening in the budgets of families who have never heard of Hormuz and never asked to be part of this conflict.

This is the hidden cost of American foreign policy: the way it reaches into the pockets of ordinary people, destabilizes fragile economies, and turns distant conflicts into local hardships.

War is never contained. It leaks into everything.

I have watched these events unfold with growing unease. I have listened to the pundits, the analysts, the retired generals. I have waited for someone to say plainly what seems obvious: that a nation cannot claim moral leadership while threatening to erase another civilization; that a democracy cannot bomb peace negotiators and call it security; that a superpower cannot kill children and call it collateral. Bombing the infrastructure of Iran at will only goes to prove the Iranian point that they need a nuclear weapon to deter outlandish aggression from the United States. If Iran had a nuclear weapon, this invasion would never have happened, certainly not with the impunity displayed by the Americans.

So, I break my silence. Not because I have all the answers. Not because I speak for any party or ideology. But because conscience demands it.

A nation as powerful as the United States must be held to a higher standard, not a lower one. Our strength should be measured not by the reach of our weapons but by the restraint with which we use them. Our greatness should be judged not by the fear we inspire but by the mercy we extend.

Power without mercy is not sustainable. It corrodes a nation’s soul. It erodes the trust of allies. It fuels the resolve of enemies. It destabilizes the world.

We must demand better from our leaders, from our institutions, from ourselves. We must insist on diplomacy, accountability, and a renewed moral imagination. We must remember that the world is not a chessboard but a shared home, fragile and interdependent. The Artemis crew told us as much on their voyage around the backside of the moon. The crew described a universe abounding in darkness, but Earth stood out as a living, breathing, colorful rock in the cosmos. How blessed we are to live on a planet bustling with life. We should at least respect what we have by living peacefully with those who inhabit this oasis surrounded by darkness.

I have been quiet too long. But I am speaking now. And I will continue to speak until mercy returns to the vocabulary of American power.

Author’s Note

I’ve been away from this space longer than I intended. Life pulled me toward the work that pays the bills, necessary work, steady work, but work that leaves little room for the writing that asks more of me. Like many writers, I live in that tension between calling and survival. Some seasons allow both. This one did not.

But even as I tended to the work that keeps the lights on, this piece kept pressing on me. I carried its sentences through long days. I felt the weight of the moment
growing heavier, the cost of silence growing sharper. Eventually, the pull to
speak became stronger than the reasons to stay quiet.

So, I’m here again, doing the work I’m meant to do.

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