The writer John Stein­beck called war “a symp­tom of man’s fail­ure as a think­ing ani­mal.” Pruss­ian gen­er­al Carl von Clause­witz char­ac­terised it  as “the con­tin­u­a­tion of pol­i­tics by oth­er means.” The lat­est ver­sion is the tri­umph of hubris, ego and igno­rance of his­to­ry and culture.

Wag­ing war – espe­cial­ly when you enjoy mil­i­tary supe­ri­or­i­ty – is a lot eas­i­er than for­mu­lat­ing and main­tain­ing clear pur­pose and stead­fast deter­mi­na­tion to nego­ti­ate. Per­son­al motives like polit­i­cal sur­vival and evad­ing scruti­ny over cor­rup­tion and incom­pe­tence can be obscured by  pyrotechnics.
Con­trol access to facts on the ground and the nar­ra­tive can be spun at will with banal state­ments, con­tra­dic­tions and over-wrought allegations.
TV news view­ers won’t see, and are thus far less dis­posed, to think or care about what’s real­ly hap­pen­ing on the ground.
Any­thing that might upset them – dead and maimed women and chil­dren espe­cial­ly – can be veiled  as “col­lat­er­al dam­age”  or “unfor­tu­nate errors we will investigate.”
The trick, if you will, is to present vic­tims on your side as inno­cent and trau­ma­tised, while ignor­ing those on the oth­er, and if that’s not pos­si­ble, den­i­grat­ing the civil­ians you kill and maim by claim­ing it’s all their fault for being gov­erned by, or not oust­ing, lead­ers you don’t like.
Hypocrisy is only a crime when the oth­er side prac­tices it.
Israeli Defence Min­is­ter Israel Katz said Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei “can no longer be allowed to exist” after a hos­pi­tal close  to a mil­i­tary site was hit by an Iran­ian missile.
Appar­ent­ly it doesn’t occur to the min­is­ter that he arguably fits the same bill.
As of May 22, the World Health Organ­i­sa­tion had record­ed 697 Israeli attacks on health care facil­i­ties in Gaza since the war there began on Octo­ber 7, 2023.
Israeli forces have invad­ed hos­pi­tals in Gaza, detained med­ical staff and even patients and fired on clear­ly marked ambu­lances. Sol­diers have post­ed videos of them­selves smash­ing med­ical equip­ment online.
There are no ful­ly func­tion­ing hos­pi­tals left in the rub­ble of Gaza.
The actions of both Iran and Israel are open to charges of war crimes, which is of course no com­fort what­so­ev­er to the inno­cent vic­tims. But do the pow­ers-that-be on either side real­ly give a damn? Yes. If it suits them politically.

                               POINTLESS THREATS

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s “maybe I will and maybe I won’t” drop the bunker buster bomb is school­yard lev­el face-off, but it’s report­ed as cri­sis management.
His social media post threat­en­ing to make Israel Katz’s day and tar­get Khamenei: “We know exact­ly where he is”, but adding “we are not going to take him out (kill!), at least for now”,  is cul­tur­al igno­rance of a sim­i­lar order.
Even a pass­ing acquain­tance with Islam makes it clear that’s not going to deter, let alone ter­ri­fy a Shia cler­ic. For true believ­ers, being “mar­tyred”, espe­cial­ly defend­ing Islam, means instant arrival and admit­tance to Par­adise, ‘a place of supreme beau­ty, eter­nal peace, and unend­ing happiness’
Mar­tyrs spend eter­ni­ty in bliss, look­ing down at their ene­mies in Hell, which the Quran describes as “char­ac­ter­ized by severe fire, extreme heat, boil­ing water, and unliv­able con­di­tions, the pain of which will be phys­i­cal­ly expe­ri­enced by the evildoers”.
Trump’s brag­gado­cio also runs counter to the pro­hi­bi­tion of assas­si­nat­ing sov­er­eign lead­ers, which “has been a foun­da­tion­al pil­lar of world order since the Treaty of West­phalia (1648)”.
The U.S. also recog­nis­es the Leiber Code of 1863,which declared such killings “a relapse into barbarism.”
Only the naïve would assume such high ideals will be acknowl­edged, let alone adhered to by today’s war pro­mot­ers. But there’s some­thing to be said for point­ing out the stan­dards by which his­to­ry will judge them.

                     HYPOCRISY AND HEAD SCRATCHING

And speak­ing of standards…Israel, which is will­ing to bomb any­one it con­sid­ers an “exis­ten­tial threat”: to the Jew­ish state, “…is wide­ly believed to have at least 90 war­heads and enough fis­sile mate­r­i­al to pro­duce up to hun­dreds more”,  accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Arms Con­trol and Non-pro­lif­er­a­tion and the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
Iran, like every­one else, is expect­ed to con­sid­er that unin­spect­ed trove an accept­able sta­tus quo.
In the inter­est of his des­per­ate long­ing for a peace prize, Trump might be able to pres­sure both sides to pause for breath and reflection.
But that piv­ots on whether even he knows what he meant by  “…there’s a sub­stan­tial chance of nego­ti­a­tions that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future”
The telling line about Trump’s com­pe­tence to lead the world back from the brink was buried deep in a Wash­ing­ton Post sto­ry. Accord­ing to an unnamed source : “…he (Trump) has con­sult­ed with a wide array of advis­ers, call­ing up not just Cab­i­net sec­re­taries but also right-wing media hosts such as Mark Levin to col­lect argu­ments for and against tak­ing mil­i­tary action.”
Proof, if any more was need­ed, that both Stein­beck and Clause­witz were right.

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