On April 7 at 8 p.m., the President of the United States wrote this on his social media page: I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

Pause for a moment and let this sink in: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to exist again. Do we truly understand the gravity of that? Do we grasp what is being done in our name? Or do we simply drift on to the next medication commercial after the news report, barely noticing what we just heard?

This threat would mean the murder of 24 million Iranians who are babies, toddlers, kids in grade school, or teens in middle school. One of them is a four year old girl named Tara. She lives with her parents and siblings in a small village outside Tehran.

It would mean the murder of 63 million people aged 15 to 64. Among them is Sara, a single mother with two kids living in a slum in Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city.

It would mean the murders of over 6 million people over age 65, including Amir, a former farmer from Zahedan on the Pakistan border, loved and revered by his eight grandchildren.

Trying to wipe out a people, a culture, or a nation is one of the worst crimes known to humanity. It is genocide. To threaten the end of a civilization is an act of shocking cruelty. It is hard to even imagine such a thing. Erasing an entire civilization is an atrocity so immense that even the darkest criminal minds would recoil at its scale.

Some people in public office — such as Republicans Sen. Ron Johnson, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Rep. Nathaniel Moran, and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — have spoken out and called this threat dangerous, un�’American, or morally wrong. Few if any other major Republican leaders appear to have joined them. Not Representative Meuser. Not Representative Thompson

Experts say that even a huge nuclear strike would not truly erase a civilization. People survive. Cultures persevere. The attacker would face massive retaliation in the form of terrorism, destruction of their infrastructure like water sheds and power plants, and cyberattacks on its energy, communication and business assets, soft targets like schools, churches, supermarkets and shopping malls, global outrage, and likely their own identity as a people. Nuclear war is not “victory.” It is mutual destruction. The attacked lose their physical lives. The attackers, their souls.

Is voting for a leader who makes such a threat — or for any official who stays silent about it, mean taking part in that act by allowing it to stand? That’s a good question to raise with your pastor or at your next Bible study class…or with yourself the next time you say your nighttime prayers.

TIM MANNELLO

Williamsport

Submitted by email