The Time Machine Conundrum

If you had a time machine, would you go back and kill Baby Hitler?

I want to reframe the Iran “war” situation for a moment. While I support the strikes by the United States and Israel—now gaining support from other reluctant “allies”—I am not a proponent of a boots-on-the-ground effort in a country as large and populous as Iran. We have already learned, at great cost, what happens when we attempt to reorder an ancient civilization by force. Just as there were Germans loyal to Hitler until the bitter end, there are Iranians who will remain loyal to the theocratic regime because rejecting it would require abandoning deeply embedded religious belief and dogma. Iraq and Afghanistan taught us that you cannot bomb a theology out of existence or install Western liberalism at the point of a rifle. That is a virtual impossibility.

We are familiar with the phenomenon of Democrats, NeverTrumpers, and certain libertarians reflexively opposing President Trump simply because he is Donald J. Trump. It now appears we can add reflexive antisemitism to that list of motivations in some quarters. For some—Jews included—anything perceived as good for Israel is sufficient reason to oppose it. “America First” becomes “America Isolated,” as if the nation that leads the free world can wall itself off, become a hermit kingdom, and suffer no consequences. It is a convenient posture and for some, hostility toward Israel becomes a socially acceptable vehicle for older prejudices, cloaked inside broader opposition to Trump.

This led me to a question—one of those mental and moral test questions that exposes how people think. We all know the thought experiment: “If you had a time machine, would you go back and kill Baby Hitler?” It is not about time travel, rather a philosophical puzzle meant to probe whether future consequences justify present actions. It asks whether moral responsibility extends backward through time and whether it is ever permissible to harm one innocent person to prevent immense future harm.

Reframed for today, the question becomes this: “If you had a time machine, would you go back and prevent the Islamic regime in Iran from ever existing?”

The Hitler scenario is a classic divide in moral philosophy. Utilitarianism would likely answer yes. If preventing one life prevents millions of deaths, the arithmetic seems straightforward. If morality is about minimizing suffering, then the greater good governs the choice—even if the calculation makes us uncomfortable.

Deontological ethics, particularly in the Kantian tradition, says no. Killing an innocent person is intrinsically wrong, regardless of outcome. Virtue ethics shifts the focus to character: what kind of person would murder a child? Natural Law, rooted in classical Christian thought, is equally categorical—one may not do evil so that good may come of it.

In short, the divide reveals whether morality is primarily about results, rules, or character.

Here is where I land.

For decades, Western societies have been taught that religion is myth, that theology is a relic, and that material conditions explain everything. But history tells a different story. Human beings are often motivated by religious conviction—especially when that conviction carries a “manifest destiny” element and permits violence in service of divine command. Since its beginning, Islam has been in competition with Judaism and Christianity for civilizational dominance. That competition has not always been peaceful.

The geopolitical ripple effects of a fallen Iranian theocracy would not stop at Tehran. China’s ambitions toward Taiwan and Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine are not isolated phenomena; they exist in a global balance of power. We do not need to speculate, history provides evidence. From the Siege of Constantinople and the Battle of Tours in the eighth century to 9/11 in 2001 and October 7 in 2023, we know of what militant Islamist movements are capable.

While there is no formal ideological merger between Islam and communism, there have been tactical alignments—shared opposition to Western liberalism, capitalism, and national sovereignty. Where those alliances exist, weakening one affects the others.

There are many people who would confidently say they would kill Baby Hitler to prevent six million Jews from being exterminated and tens of millions more from dying in war. There are those who openly fantasize about doing the same to Vladimir Putin—some even speak that way about Donald Trump, yet many of these same voices recoil at the idea of decisively neutralizing what is widely regarded as the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism before it acquires nuclear capability.

That inconsistency is striking.

The truth is, we all possess a kind of time machine. We are living in it. Every decision shapes the future. America once faced the choice of dropping atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II rather than invade the mainland at catastrophic cost. That decision remains debated, but history suggests it shortened the war and reduced total casualties compared to the alternative.

Ending the Iranian regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and curbing its sponsorship of terror is a similarly grave choice. It does not require occupation or nation-building but it requires clarity about consequences. We cannot change the past, but we can influence the trajectory of the future.

The question is not whether we have a time machine but whether we are willing to use the one we already have.