I too have fantasies of smashing my enemies for valor. Most boys and likely women, especially after marriage, have this impulse too. Sit in a soft chair, wear an oversized hat, savor the agreement of such stern faces around you. Then give the order: fleets, flights, and feet roll into motion. Time and attention fuse. Sparks engulf everything they touch.
I say all this because there are neurons in me that rally to Trump’s and Israel’s horn blast for the Iranian people to rise up. Sadly though all I can see is the causalities that will be counted tomorrow. If we wanted to liberate Iran we would send Rangers, and build the revolution from scratch at the community level, and then roll the dice and wait.
I do not think Trump and Israel are saving anyone here though and all the factions contributing should know better. Bad hominids. Have you not learned yet that revolution will never work from top down, especially by crony governments with ballistics that long ago lost their capacity to achieve peace with communication and cooperation.
All governments have their corruption and all war is tragedy. My grandfather taught me a lot about war. He was proud of being a soldier but that man hated war, like only a person who has fought a World War can. I don’t think Trump or Netanyahu or Iran’s Clerics had a grandfather like mine, if they had they would put their swords away.
Today my prayers are for the good soldiers with little spoil for their iron duty and the civilians at the bottom of the pits. And, as today’s war inevitably expands, I pray against the small probability it ignites World War III.
Epilogue: For anyone wondering why can’t TEH give his POTUS Trump a chance I offer a hysteresis curve. Compare Trump to FDR for example, separated by 100 years. We were attacked, in a conflict that was not ignited by our country, and then FDR mobilized the American military. FDR then set in motion the world order that Trump dismantled before he fired on Iran. This matters. History always matters. The sequence here is wrong and it portends the mistakes that will follow. Takeaway, do not celebrate yet what is unfolding today. I have no fondness for Irans government, but I can’t do anything about it. And Trump can’t this way either, and the sad thing is he can’t even recognize it.
Trump could fight against inequality, inflation, infection, or climate change catastrophe but he won’t because he is hedged on the wrong side of history for all of those causes. Now all of a sudden he’s a liberator, from what? Iranian and Israeli strong men. Please, you cannot stop a measles menace by increasing measles’ outbreaks, and the same goes for today’s war overture.