I haven’t posted much lately, but of course I feel compelled to say something about this.
But what should I say? I don’t feel qualified to express an opinion about it — yet. I might have in the past, but I’m hobbled by two things:
- Donald Trump is president of the United States. He and Pete Hegseth are the main sources available right now as to what just happened, and I can’t trust a word either one says about it. When I say “can’t trust,” I’m not so much talking about lying — although we all know Trump does that almost each time he takes a breath. The thing is, he and Hegseth could be tellling the absolute and complete truth. And from everything I’ve seen, neither one of them understands what’s going on — especially not Trump (I don’t know Hegseth nearly as well).
- Second, the way news is reported these days, it’s difficult to get a coherent picture of what has happened from major newspapers. A few years ago, those papers spent the hours before their daily deadline distilling all that was known into a single, coherent story arranged with all the key information in the first paragraph (the lede). You read the first few grafs of a story back then, and you had a pretty decent idea of what had happened. Now, whenever something big happens, you get these moment-to-moment update strings, such as this one and this one. You have to read every update from the last to the first (sometimes stretching over 24 hours) to get anything like a handle on the story, and even then it’s difficult. When something of moderate importance happens, you still get the one, coherent story — with new ledes added as necessary. With the big stories, such as this, newspapers are little help, because you get the “updates” string instead. They no longer focus on helping readers understand; they’re too busy making sure they throw out the latest factoid.
So… that means I turn to the journalists who still write in the old style — and that means opinion writers. Of course, since I know who they are, I look for the ones I know are trustworthy — again, not so much in terms of not being liars (although, of course, that’s a prerequisite), but because they have consistently displayed deep understanding of such matters in the past.
Unfortunately, not many have weighed in yet. For the moment, I recommend checking out Nicholas Kristof (“The Three Unknowns After the U.S. Strike on Iran“) and Max Boot (“Iran badly miscalculated. Now it’s paying the price.“). And while he’s not one of my trustee regular voices, you might want to read this piece (“Why Israel Had to Act“) by Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence. It was written before the U.S. joined in, but I still learned some things from it that help me understand Max Boot’s points.
That’s of course assuming you can read them. If you can’t and you want to, I can try to give you “gift” links. (I’ve tried in the past to share those with you, but I haven’t gotten enough feedback on them to be sure whether they even work when sent to more than one person.)
So I’m waiting to read a lot more, from smart people who’ve been following all this far, far more closely than I have.
But I should say something, right? But all I have now is random, chaotic, piecemeal reactions — which is probably what you’ve seen elsewhere at this point, whether those offering such reactions tell you that or not (especially if you’re someone who forms your impressions of such events by watching television, God help us).
So here you go:
- I’m very, very worried. Smart leaders (pretty much everyone who’s been in relevant office before Trump was elected) have avoided war with Iran for very good reasons. One of the biggest is something Kristof mentions: By and large, the Iranian public is quite pro-U.S. What they need is new leaders, if they can manage to get them. And the fastest way to turn them against us is military action. That change in Iran public opinion would be disastrous.
- That said, it is indeed essential to make sure that Iran, whose current leaders hate the U.S. almost as much as they do Israel, does not obtain nuclear weapons. If you look at that and only that, these U.S. strikes are good news — if they were effective, by which I mean they set Iranian nuclear efforts back many years without killing civilians. That’s a big “if.”
- The one thing that makes me tentatively optimistic (and only slightly) on that last point is that Iran can’t hide facilities essential to its own Manhattan Project in tunnels under civilian dwellings, hospitals and schools — they way we know its ally Hamas does. At least, I don’t think so. But I don’t know that.
- As much as I may search for reasons not to be terrified at this point, I know that even if all the steps taken up to this point by Trump and Netanyahu (and there’s a fragile liferaft to cling to), have been wise and correct, I know that Trump, at least, is capable of turning in another direction in a split-second, prompted by something as idiotic as a social media post he doesn’t like.
- That’s the situation that a majority of U.S. voters put us in on Nov. 5, 2024. And the only recommendation I have for dealing with that is to pray. If you don’t know how to do that, it’s past time to learn…
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Right or not, here’s a bit of snap analysis:
Netanyahu recognized that the war against Gaza was quickly petering out (alternatively: badly losing in the court of international opinion), so he needed a new conflict to focus the world’s attention on – while also keeping Israel on a war footing, so he could continue to avoid his own legal liabilities as well as his responsibility for some really bad choices. And since he’s been calling for an attack on Iran’s nuclear program (whether its aim is weapons or not is beside the point as far as he’s concerned) for several decades, an attack could never come too early, in his view.
Meanwhile, back here in Maga-Land, our dear leader saw all the strengthy-looking military victories Netanyahu was racking up (smashing up stuff in a way our own senior senator dearly loves), he got envious and decided he wanted a piece of that action, too. Because, after all, he likes looking powerful and this was really powerful-looking, real strengthy kinda stuff. And when you’re the only one in the world with the power to drop one of if not THE most powerful non-nuclear bombs halfway round the globe, that means you’ve got some real Mega-Maga super-duper powers. Looks good on TV, don’tcha know. Real toughly.
Both of those considerations are completely realistic, and add to why it’s impossible — or at least, impossible based on info currently available to me — to KNOW what to say about this.
The problem is, at this point it’s impossible to know whether some sane U.S. president such as FDR — or for that matter, Harry Truman, who initially recognized Israel — would be taking such steps.
I’d have had some confidence if they were in charge and doing this, although I’d still have plenty of uncertainty over the infinity of unknowns ahead. (Kristof’s column was good, as usual, but there are FAR more than three Unknowns — big ones, too.
What if Trump is actually doing the right thing, in keeping with the stopped clock principle? It seems unlikely, but it’s possible. But I can’t know, certainly not at this point.
Ditto with Netanyahu. What you say is certainly plausible given who this guy is. But what if it actually IS essential, to prevent Iran from obtaining nukes at a near date?
I just don’t know. The one thing I do know is that this is one of the big reasons you don’t vote for such people, EVER…
All three major actors in the countries involved – Israel, the US and Iran – lack credibility in this instance. All three are subject to bad motivations. And all three have taken actions that violate international law. There are no grounds to presume that anyone has done the right thing here.
The only thing we can be sure of is that none of us likely will never know the status of the Iranian nuclear program. We won’t be able to sniff around the sites in question. Nor will we be privy to the intelligence gathered on them – or know the quality of it. But we do know something about the players involved and the contexts in which they are acting. So we are in a position to draw some reasonable inferences about their motivations and the actions that result – which I outlined.
Follow up — from a recent article by Fintan O’Toole (The Irish Times):
“…this can be thought of as a FOMO war, triggered by Trump’s fear of missing out. In a development that may be without parallel in US history, a president entered a foreign war as a follower, not a leader. The attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities was Benjamin Netanyahu’s war, the fulfillment of a desire he has nurtured for decades. When it started the official White House position, articulated by Rubio on June 12, was that ‘Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran.’
It quickly became clear, however, that Netanyahu had scored, in more senses than one, a palpable hit. The extraordinary efficiency of Israel’s attack—its intelligence-led assassinations of Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists and above all its rapid destruction of Iran’s air defenses—made it an almost immediate triumph. Trump was the equivalent of the guy who rushes into a barroom fight to deliver a kick in the ribs to an opponent who is already writhing on the ground. He knew that Netanyahu would be smart enough to raise Trump’s arm and declare him the great victor.”
Which Netanyahu did. Then Trump followed up with his own little victory jig:
We’ve done a good job of creating future terrorists in the last week.
Israel has done a real good job of it.