When Every Side Claims a Monopoly on God
In the ongoing debris of such conflicts as USA, Iran & Isreal, there is a recurring ghost in the machinery of war. It is not a new weapon or doctrine, but a conviction as old as the hills: the belief that the Almighty has already picked a side.
From the halls of Washington to the high-security bunkers of Tehran and the war cabinets of Jerusalem, the rhetoric remains remarkably consistent. Leaders invoke divine providence not just as a source of comfort, but as a moral shield. It is a potent, dangerous alchemy, transforming geopolitical interests into holy mandates and, in the process, rendering the âunsavoryâ or the âillegalâ as merely necessary steps in a cosmic plan.
Long before the current escalations dominated our feeds, Bob Dylan captured this paradox with precision. His 1964 folk masterpiece, âWith God on Our Side,â remains perhaps the most lucid autopsy of religious nationalism ever recorded.
The song is a weary travelogue through history, from the slaughter of the Spanish-American War to the Cold Warâs nuclear brinkmanship. With each verse, Dylanâs narrator adopts the nonchalance of the indoctrinated, noting that through every massacre and every betrayal, the justification remains the same: *âYou donât count the dead / When Godâs on your side.â*
The brilliance of the track lies in its exhausting repetition. It forces the listener to confront the statistical impossibility of everyone being âthe chosen.â If every army marches under the same banner of divine approval, then the concept of âGodâ becomes less of a spiritual guide and more of a tactical assetâa celestial âhall passâ for the unthinkable.
Today, we see this ancient script being recited with renewed fervor across three distinct theaters:
The United States often framing its foreign policy as a struggle for âuniversal values,â the U.S. frequently leans on a secularised version of manifest destiny. Here, God is the silent partner in âexceptionalism,â used to justify interventions that often bypass the very international laws the nation helped create.
Israel: Rooted in a deep, historical synthesis of faith and land, the current conflict sees religious Zionism utilised to validate hardline stances. When the defense of the state is viewed through a messianic lens, the nuance of human rights law can often feel, to some, like a secondary concern to a primary divine decree.
Iran: Operating as a theocracy, the stateâs very foundation is built on the idea of *Velayat-e Faqih* (Guardianship of the Jurist). In this framework, opposition to the state is not just political dissent; it is âenmity against God,â a label that has been used to justify systemic internal crackdowns and external proxy wars.
When a soldier or a drone operator believes they are the instrument of a higher power, the ârules of engagementâ become remarkably flexible. International law (the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter) is a human construct. It is fragile, but a divine mandate? That is perceived as absolute.
This certainty is what permits the âunsavory.â It allows for the collateral damage of civilian lives to be dismissed as âprovidenceâ and for the violation of sovereign borders to be seen as âreclaiming what is holy.â
The tragedy of the âGod on our sideâ narrative is that it leaves no room for the most basic tenet of almost every major faith: the sanctity of life.
If we were to strip away the theological justifications and the righteous posturing, we would be left with a startlingly simple reality. The âenemyâ across the border is praying to a version of the same silence, seeking protection for the same families, and bleeding the same red.
Ultimately, the world does not need a more convincing argument for whose side God is on. It needs a collective ceasefire from the arrogance of claiming Him. If the killing stopped (if the justification for the bayonet and the missile was no longer âThy will be doneâ) the world would be a better place. It wouldnât matter whose side He was on, because we would finally be on the side of humanity.
As Dylan famously wondered in his final verse, if God really is on our side, He might just stop the next war instead of starting it.
What a mess!
Mathew Halford