One of the most per­plex­ing con­stan­cies of the mod­ern world is that the stu­pid nev­er realise they are and the intel­li­gent wor­ry too much about appear­ing con­de­scend­ing to tell them.

The result is that we are at the mer­cy (or more prop­er­ly, its antithe­sis) of lead­ers and their acolytes who are either so gen­uine­ly stu­pid  they believe their own lies, or think we’re  so stu­pid that we believe them.
I’m not sure which is worse.
The conun­drum was recent­ly pack­aged in the form of Admi­ral Brad Coop­er, the head of the U.S. military’s  Cen­tral Com­mand, which is con­duct­ing the war against Iran.
Coop­er unabashed­ly told sen­a­tors that the only civil­ian “casu­al­ty event” — appar­ent­ly new mil­i­tary-speak for “col­lat­er­al dam­age” — from more than 13,600 strikes in Iran, was the school in which 175 peo­ple, the major­i­ty of them chil­dren, were killed.
He even caveat­ed that by not­ing that the “event” was  still under investigation.
Accord­ing to ver­i­fied reports from human rights groups and West­ern media, dozens of schools and med­ical facil­i­ties have been hit and hun­dreds, per­haps thou­sands of civil­ians have been injured and killed.
The Admiral’s dis­claimer of respon­si­bil­i­ty was that: “Our staff specif­i­cal­ly warned the Iran­ian peo­ple more than 100 times about the threat of them being used as human shields, I  per­son­al­ly warned the Iran­ian people.”
Since he has no access to Iran­ian state media, it’s a stu­pid ques­tion to ask how he thinks his mes­sage got through,  and to what per­cent­age of the civil­ian population.
If he gen­uine­ly thinks that warn­ing would  hsve been enough for civil­ians to stay safe in a coun­try run by an author­i­tar­i­an, theo­crat­ic regime under attack by the U.S. and Israeli mil­i­tary, he’s more than stu­pid, he’s delusional.
I’ve been on the ground when and where Amer­i­can fire­pow­er  was unleashed in Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ser­bia, and Koso­vo (the lat­ter two when the oper­a­tion was under a UN umbrella.)
Civil­ians were not the intend­ed tar­get in any of those places.
Civil­ians were wound­ed. maimed, and killed in all of them.

         STUPIDITY AS THE OPTION OF  CHOICE

It’s not hind­sight to recog­nise that tear­ing up a work­ing treaty to cur­tail Iran’s nuclear ambi­tions, and then going to war in the mid­dle of nego­ti­at­ing a new one, was any­thing but stupid.
The same applies to Pres­i­dent Donld Trump’s claim the war was won “in the first hour”, and every vic­to­ry pre­dic­tion and claim  he has made since.
The worst-run coun­tries tend to be those in which stu­pid­i­ty is no draw­back for pres­i­den­tial staff, espe­cial­ly if their obse­quious­ness and will­ing­ness to flat­ter the leader out­weighs any propen­si­ty to help the great leader present a sem­blance of at least a min­i­mal grasp on real­i­ty in public.
White House spokes­woman Olivia Wales expects the Press and the pub­lic to accept that the U.S. “dec­i­mat­ed the Iran­ian regime’s mil­i­tary capa­bil­i­ties in 38 short days and is now stran­gling what’s left of their econ­o­my with one of the most suc­cess­ful naval block­ades in history.”
Tout­ing  a block­ade as suc­cess­ful is bor­der­line stu­pid at the very least.
Israel has imposed a near com­plete one on Gaza, and in lim­it­ed forms the West Bank, for years, and look what its has achieved.
But then, being stu­pid isn’t some­thing that seems to wor­ry the cur­rent Israeli regime.
Maj Gen Avi Bluth, head of the army’s cen­tral com­mand, recent­ly told a closed forum that his troops were “killing like we haven’t killed since 1967”, includ­ing fatal­ly shoot­ing Pales­tini­ans throw­ing stones at sol­diers and pass­ing Israeli vehicles.
The Israeli mil­i­tary has been fir­ing live ammu­ni­tion at stone-hurl­ing Pales­tin­ian youths for years, a clear case of futil­i­ty adding up to stu­pid­i­ty on both sides.
It reminds me of the head of the Sowe­to riot police squad, Colonel The­u­nis “Rooi Rus” Swanepoel dur­ing the 1976 anti-apartheid protest in Sowe­to, Asked why the riot police didn’t use rub­ber bul­lets instead of live ammunition:to quell unrest, he replied:  “When they start throw­ing rub­ber stones, we’ll start shoot­ing rub­ber bullets.”
Harass­ing and rough­ing up the for­eign Press was com­mon­place dur­ing the anti-apartheid strug­gle of the 1970s and 80s. But the South African cops and mil­i­tary weren’t dumb, or evil enough to shoot at us with any­thing more dead­ly than riot guns.
The Israeli mil­i­tary (IDF), on the oth­er hand, are stu­pid, and venal enough to think killing jour­nal­ists with sniper rifles, drones, tanks and air-to-ground mis­siles will hide, rather than high­light, excess­es and atroc­i­ties in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank.
The IDF has com­mit­ted more tar­get­ed killings of the press than any oth­er government’s mil­i­tary on record, includ­ing two thirds of the record 129 killed world­wide in 2025.In the words of Dr Mar­tin Luther King: “Noth­ing in all the wor
ld is more dan­ger­ous than sin­cere igno­rance and con­sci­en­tious stupidity.”

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