It is hard to be up to date with any coverage for an ongoing war, especially in the social media age. Things move fast, the information that is real, verified, takes time to be confirmed and understood as factual. Lies, deception and sensationalism spreads fast, it’s produced cheap and nastily with the single purpose of engagement or to manipulate perspectives in those crucial moments of world opinion. Right now, in it’s war on Iran, the US and Israel are engaged in a battle for optics and the decapitation of the Iranian regime.
The genocide in Gaza, attacks on Lebanon and Syria and now the war against Iran are keeping Benjamin Netanyahu in power. He’s been marred in controversies and scandals, the war for now ensure that he survives. But, the ambition to wage war on Iran precedes his present strife.
Since 1979, when the dictator or Shah, was overthrown by a popular revolution made up of numerous factions, Iran has been in the cross hairs. As was the case for the Russian revolution, in Iran the Bolshevik’s replaced the moderates. Iran suffered beneath another repressive regime, one that was born from deranged theological Utopianism. Neighbouring Iraq with support of the West, invaded post-revolution Iran. The pair fought a war of mass death and attrition, in some ways a glimmer of the current Russian-Ukraine war. New technologies, old weapons and the ancient purity of human death.
During this period, Saddam Hussein was embraced by the US. His dictatorship an ally. Iran, despite it’s pariah status received crucial assistance from Israel. The Israeli’s helped keep their complex weapon systems working, supplying them when other nations were not allowed, even playing a crucial role during the Reagan administrations Iran-Contra scandal. Israel was feeding one enemy to fight another. Just as they had once supported Islamic fundamentalists to counterbalance the secular ideological nationalist terror groups, they backed Persians over Arabs.
Once the war on terror was announced, the US government clumped all of it’s ‘most wanted’ nations under one term, “Axis of Evil”. It was marketable, had a catchy ring and to many of the viewers of CNN or Fox, it sounded like something that the ‘coalition of the willing’ should oppose. Allies vs Axis, Central Powers vs Entente, Union vs Confederacy, from the narrative that many had invested their world views on, simply put it was ‘goodies’ vs ‘baddies’.
Iran, the enemy. Even if it had been supportive of the US operations against Afghanistan in 2001, the then crucial Northern Alliance was an Iranian ally as it waged it’s war against the Taliban. Then even Russia was supportive of the US wars on terror. Even if the US had only years earlier been assisting ‘terrorists’ against Russia.
During the Bush presidency Hollywood had moments where it displayed anti-imperialist sentiments and was less jingoistic, such films as Syriana, had the cynical depiction of American policy. General Wesley Clark himself publicly admitted that key nations were on the menu to be toppled. That included Iran. Syria, Iraq, Libya having already since fallen. Israel and the US are separate nations, the relationship between them is however deeply entwined. There is no formal alliance, it has become strategic and imperially ideological. But above all, spiritual.
The criticism of Israeli influence in US politics through AIPAC along with the religious affection that nationalistic Christians have for the State of Israel, reveal a degree of co-dependency. Israel is especially dependent. It needs the United States to retain it’s ambitions and perhaps, some have argued, it’s very survival. Survival as a settler colony ever expanding, not survival as a nation living in peace with it’s neighbours.
Whether Israel would be pushed into the sea by the Arab masses is unlikely, despite the 1973 attempt to do so. The world has mostly changed since then. It has been the Israeli settler colonial ambitions that has threatened the stability of the region. It’s turned the Palestinian into a human being that is on average younger than most other groups, having suffered hardship and loss that is incomprehensible for most other collective groups of individuals to relate with. The occupation of Palestine, and genocide of Gaza as a reaction to the 7th October terror attacks have become accepted by the international community. Attacking Lebanon and Syria as they have in recent times, with impunity has fostered a hubris which has now led to the attacks on Iran.
For those too young to remember, over twenty years ago, the pretext to invade Iraq was based on theclaim that the regime was developing Weapons of Mass Destruction, WMD’s. It has been proven to be a false claim. Lies, blatant in many cases led to that war. It was a farce that many in the media and international institutions entertained without validating the claims made by the US government. The recent attacks on Iran have also been based on the claim that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. The irony is that if Iran or Iraq for that matter did have nukes, then they would be like North Korea, left mostly alone. When it comes to certain national governments, it does not matter whether the claims are verifiable or not, any pretext is accepted for war. They become stated facts. That is power. Raw, unchecked power.
The world can witness the mass death of people in Gaza at the hands of Israel or in the past, accepted the US mass bombings of South East Asia, then the war on Iraq which led to a decade of starvation and bombings, until out right invasion followed. It’s the assumed right of some nations to kill many people. To claim that it’s in self defence, a pre-emptive war.
The prevailing wisdom of policy wonks and their cheerleaders being that the ‘people’ in the enemy nations must suffer because the populace either voted for the pariah regime or have not over thrown it. The wisdom further declares that if a foreign power, starves and murders enough of them, then the population under attack will embrace the attacking foreign power and overthrow their domestic oppressors. It allows for the killers and their supporters to blame the victims, those dying and suffering, to remove any culpability or responsibility. War is simple. It’s reduced to basic calculations.
How much this war will expand, we shall see. There is a slow rejection of the United States and it’s endless wars. Many of it’s allies are suffering beneath debt and malaise from their own domestic policies that have weakened themselves into fragility. The US itself is roaring with as much bluster as it is might. No matter how many military parades comrade Trump orders.
Israel is not acting alone with reckless abandon, it does so with the support, agreement and the shared desires of the US. The US, as far as it’s history goes, has always found a reason to wage war. Even in the past as it’s leaders criticised imperialism, the US government invested in it’s own versions of it. The US government is fixated with the narrative of being ‘good’. The critics of US or Israeli foreign policy can’t use examples of hypocrisy or reason because the right to war for them is absolute as a religion. It is a national identity. Peace can not be. The identity for both is to conquer the frontiers and to achieve whatever beyond the horizon Utopia on Earth. But for themselves or, theirs. The US needs enemies. It requires them, invented, imagined, or real.
Unfortunately, so long as human beings, those who serve, and the masters themselves believe this to be true, then there can be no peace on earth. There is no acceptance of others, no harmony. Only the belief that good must triumph over evil. The definition of good, and evil for that matter are less about individual consequences or distinctions but instead are based on collective convictions. Therefore individuals suffer, all it comes down to is the mantra that, “we are doing evil, for a greater good. Therefore we are doing good.”Policy and self conviction is based on this.
Or, “better us than them.”
It is absent of any moral good. It’s the same self righteous ambition to conquer, destroy and subjugate that draws back into ancient times. When Alexander was decided to be Great because of his conquests. Caesar embraced as emperor and thus his name enshrined as such, Tsar, Kaiser and so on, despite the genocides he oversaw. Ghengis Khan, the greatest of the Khan’s because of the vicious ability of his warriors to kill and destroy. History glorifies these names, their reigns as great. We do not have the footage or photos of their victims and the carnage, the violence is now trapped only in ink. Even if we could see the visceral violence, it would not dissuade any from supporting, or heralding them. We know this to be true. Right now, we can peer in and see the death of war and most of us, don’t really care or, even cheer for it. And, murmur with truth, “better them than us.”
Israeli and Iranian people are now experiencing modern war. As much as their governments and the profiteers of war promised their protection, the missiles and drones still got through. The Iron Dome and many other incarnations of air defence are as valid as Herman Goering’s promise that no enemy bomber will bomb the Reich. Alas, as was the case then, the bomber indeed did get through. So shall the missiles and drones. And, the civilians die even despite the promises of protection from the governments which created the circumstances for war. The ‘bomber’ shall always get through. Civilians die.
The US has supported Israel with intelligence, air defence and arms for the attack on Iran. Ukraine missed out on allocated weapon systems which were instead sent to Israel in anticipation for the attack. Just as South Vietnam missed out on crucial supplies in 1973 that were then diverted to Israel, the Ukrainians discover who the most favoured nation for the US is. The genocide in Gaza would be impossible if not for US weapons and ammunition, and the war on Iran would be impossible without the US desire to wage it.
One day, the academics, scientists, war masters and political elites embolden by the countless nationalists and welfare dependent will watch the world burn thanks to the governments they do rely on and love. In a colossal series of atomic blasts. If there is any great lesson to be learned from humanity is that it’s never enough. And war, is the testament to that declaration, it’s never enough. It can’t end because we have never had enough of war. Even if it leads to a bitter end, because even then it will be never enough.
