Editor:

The insistence of the Bush Administration in tilting at the windmill of Iran must give us pause, mainly because the neo-cons who counsel the president have no grasp of Iranian history — even recent history.

When Iraq invaded Iran after the Ayatollah Khomeini took power, Saddam Hussein thought he saw weakness. The Ayatollah had disbanded the Iranian military — a vestige of the CIA-supported Shah’s regime — and Saddam thought he would just roll over the Iranian regime and steal the oil infrastructure.

Saddam’s military, using weapons supplied by the United States, met with no armed resistance, but was stopped cold by an attack of tens of thousand Iranian Basij. These Iranian Basij attacked the Iraqis in wave after wave and drove them back across the border, despite the fact that more than 10,000 Basij were killed in that one battle. The Iraqis fired their weapons until they were out of ammunition and then fled.

After this battle, the Iranian government erected a monument to the Basij called Fountain of Martyrdom. This fountain contained water stained the color of blood, representing the blood of the Basij who had martyred themselves driving the Iraqis from Iran.

And who were the Basij and what were the Basij armed with? The Basij (which means “recruit” in Farsi) were boys between the ages of 8 and 12 and they were armed only with the Koran. Each boy carried only his Koran in his hands as he marched to his death.

So, when American generals puff that the defeat of the Iraqi military was an astounding military success, and that an invasion of Iran would have similar results, we need to recognize that Iran defeated this same military with unarmed little boys armed only with the Koran.

And we need to recognize that our nation has, rightfully, become squeamish about the sacrifice of 3,500 dead and 15,000 wounded so far in Iraq, while Iran didn’t flinch when it sent tens of thousands of unarmed boys to die in battle armed with nothing but faith — and they won.

Such recent history should give our leaders pause when they consider invading any other Middle Eastern country, especially Iran.