The special alliance of Israel and the United States have attacked Iran, again. How severe and protracted this war shall become, we do not know. The lapdogs of empire likely will support their masters, the usual coalition such as America’s Ghurkas, or Australia, what remains of the arthritic UK and the Gulf States built on slavery and bribery. The Coalition of the Killing. Iran has it’s friend as well, China, Russia, the Houthi’s and other members of the ascending BRICS. The war is almost a symbolic deathroe of the 20^th century order, of Western might and exceptionalism at the expense of the rest of the world.

An apartheid planet where most of it’s population and land mass are viewed as cheap labour and resources, markets to exploit and control and bastions for geopolitical manipulation through intimidation, interventions, embargoes and corruptions. The often touted international rules backed order often just a self serving West first initiative to retain the status quo. To keep the minority of the population on top, now living on debt, addicted to their governments and welfare, incapable of productivity, ageing out and ever growing disabled these nations act and think like it’s the 20th century, flabby bodies and hair styles say other wise.

It’s a repulsive privilege and hubris which the rest of the world can now see with greater clarity. They can feel the pangs of toil, so that cheap products may be shipped to the wealthy nations, they can cough up the toxins from the factories because the green conscience masters exported the pollution abroad, they see their landscapes carved into scars for the rare earth needed for smart devices so that a new car can measure the farts of its driver, they see the corpses on rugs shrugged off as collateral when a drone blasts a school and they see local rulers around, one coup at a time, or because the presence of the 800 to a thousand US military bases on foreign soil ensures complicity. They see the digital culture through their own access, the disregard and disdain for the rest of the world, they can hear the petty concerns of those in the privileged belly of empire.

When the balance shifts how do many see it playing out?

The supposed liberal values of the West were myths and lies told from within, only to be homogenised away and gentrified with lies of control, surveillance and censorship. War and welfare is bread and butter. Dependency and killing strangers for reasons the dependent or even those doing the killing don’t truly understand or believe.

Here we are.

Missiles being exchanged, a deadly dance of economics. Many of those aimed at cities are cheaper than those sent up to stop them. It’s easier to manufacture the older type of missile which can be fired and forgotten, to be used on scale. It’s more complicated to make those which have to seek and destroy an incoming missile. The same is true for killer drones, as was experienced by the US Navy in the Red Sea when their Houthi rivals battered them down to a stalemate. Attrition of resources won.

Wonder weapons and high tech wizardry are impressive and work well initially. They are expensive and require time and specialisation to mass produce. War needs mass production. The complicated networks of defence procurement developed after World War Two is not based on efficiency, rather politics and profiteering. To spread manufacturing across voter districts helps projects gain approval from elected officials, unions are happy, workers get paid jobs. Spread them across the planet and you keep allies on board, as conditions of purchasing and using these expensive weapons. It’s another form of the war and welfare, a dependence and death cycle. It traps and makes others rich.

As a war evolves, especially in the modern global worldscape it can spread beyond the regions involved in the direct conflict. A Middle East War which cuts off the supply chains, upsets the trade of oil and gas, the nations who manufacture may wield their own sanctions and boycott tools, then it may cause discomfort for those not accustom to any discomforts. Shortages in medical equiptment, fuels, medications and building materials to name a few will cause grief to nations both reliant on others making these things for them but with a population now full of open mouths who do little other than to consume. The same goes for commercial and retail imports which keep shops open and commerce thriving, not to mention foods. In a longer war, can nations which have taxed and regulated their productive classes to death even conceive of getting out of their own way to let a now few, do what they do best, produce?

More importantly, the misery of war is and will continue to be felt by human beings who have been saturated in it for decades. The Iran-Iraq war was one of the most bloody and horrible in human history, a concoction of World War One wave attacks and tactics blended with late Cold War mechanisation and jet boats with RPGs. Hundreds of thousands died, millions were maimed. The War on Terror and all that entailed further wracked the region in horrors, hundreds of thousands more dead. It led to those who were the terrorist enemies winning, and spreading. The Taliban took back Afghanistan, Al Qaeda affiliates now rule Syria, warlords and chaos took control of Libya, Iraq is still full of no-go zones and the West backed Saudi coalition had to yield to their enemies in Yemen. But, the US and Israel are hungry for another war. To simply kill and spread more chaos.

The protests in Iran were complicated. People can both hate their rulers and not want to be ruled by a foreign puppet or power. We understand this in our own domestic setting, yet through the lenses of propaganda it’s always so simple. The Iranian regime is terrible. Just as is North Korea. One does not fix that by starving the people and placing the nation on a war footing. By killing human beings to punish them for suffering beneath tyrants is a rationale only conceived by well educated ghouls and their cheerleaders media bobble heads.

“Brothers who fight at home will come together when an outside bully threatens their home,” is an old fashion saying I was told as a kid which seems to be uknown by the foreign policy establishment. If you murder innocent people, you will motivate their bereaved family members into wanting vengeance, either to become insurgents-terrorists (depending on your perspective), to join the local government or militia fighting the murderers or to support those who are fighting the killers of their family.

“The enemy of my enemy is now my friend,” is a pragmatic choice that goes for individuals as much as it does as a geopolitical exercise. If a power is destroying your way of life, starving your family and even killing it. You may hate your local rulers, but if they are fighting those who are doing you the most harm, it stands to reason you will rally around them. The reason why those in the West, Americans, Australians and the modern UK, don’t understand this is because they have never really had a foreign power impose or do harm on them. Besides bullshit Russiagate intrigues of domestic shadow dancing or very real coups like that in Australia of 1975, where it’s US and UK allies grinned over the outcome, none of which are bombs and embargoes taking life. The perspectives of those on the frontiers of empire differs to those sitting in the comfortable castles of the empire looking out.

Donald Trump lied his way into the White House. He said words. It’s what he does. It’s what politicians do. They all lie. Every time. Baby Bush went on about no need for nation building, he lied. Reagan ran as a small government president, he expanded it. Clinton bombed innocent people knowing that bloodshed of foreigners could wash away his cum stains on an interns blouse. The Trumptards repeated, “he didn’t start any new wars,” in light of his first term. Which was as appealing in reality as Obama’s “Hope and Change.” Brand slogans.

It’s academic to claim that if the other person, in the current Trump’s case, Kamala Harris, would have been better. The same foreign policy establishment, billion dollar donors, and geopolitical narcissism remain. His bluster and arrogance versus her corrupt follies make little difference because the victims see the US flag flying high above their dead family members. Those academic debates are the privilege of ghouls and political cheerleaders who see politics in itself as the goal, and ignore the outcomes which remain each and every time. And there is nothing more severe as an outcome than the death of the innocent. Do those obsessed with politics really care about those outcomes? Or, only winning.

The genocide in Gaza and attacks on the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria are examples of hurbis and entitlement which few powers in history have held. Israel and its US backer, are powerful. Enough money has been thrown around to convince world leaders to look the other way and down play the atrocities and as was the case for Australia, the coup nation, political heads of state are pretty easy to sway. When it comes to foreign policy, an Australian Prime Ministers position is simple, “OK, USA.” The common person needs to understand that good people don’t ascend the ranks of government, it’s not that power corrupts, the appeal for power is for those who have terrible qualities. They either see themselves as gods, capable of ruling and steering humanity with such omnipotent power, whether they feign benevolence or not, or they do so because they are drawn to power, wealth and the ability to rule, kill and master. War is the great reveller of such people.

It shows us where principles lay. Where cowardice stands. Where dignity roars and where real evil exists, usually beneath the shield of pragmatism, under the flag of nationalism and at times the emblems of faith. So long others do the killing. More of them die. Victory is worth it. What is victory? Another Shah? To fragment Iran into a Balkans? To kill more of them, destroy their land, lay the region to rubble? Perhaps that is a victory to those in suits and uniforms who see the world through maps and as a stage of ‘them’ and ‘us’.

Human beings will and are dying. This should matter. The humanist and supposed liberal victories of the 20^th century have dwindled into an age of entitlement and indifference. Dependency that has become a drug, making us all cowards. There is an indignity to not feeling indignation over the destruction of the innocent. It’s not them versus us. These are human beings. Whether they speak Farsi or English should not matter, a crying baby sounds the same in any language. And the tears of a parent feel just as painful. The gods of war don’t care about such things, only the conquest and waste, rivers of blood and plumes of acrid smoke. Foreign policy beyond the boardrooms and signal messages is the putrid stench of death. Many of you voted for this, many of you love the hierarchies of death, war is governments ultimate reflection, coercion and force, beyond the legalese and pretence of balance or order. It’s brutal might. Wielding the cudgels of legitimacy are flawed and imperfect human beings. No better than their victims. Unlike their victims, they profit. Remember the victims.

Remember who started this war.