"No part of the Great War compares in interest with its opening. The measured, silent drawing together of gigantic forces, the uncertainty of their movements and positions, the number of unknown and unknowable facts made the first collision a drama never surpassed. Nor was there any other period in the War when the general battle was waged on so great a scale, when the slaughter was so swift or the stakes so high. Moreover, in the beginning our faculties of wonder, horror, or excitement had not been cauterized and deadened by the furnace fires of years."
Winston Churchill was full of shit. There are fourteen points in World War I as interesting as its opening, but he's right that no shock in the 20th century was as eruptive as the opening of World War I. Not even the Holocaust or Hiroshima could compare. The others might have been the low points of man's inhumanity to man, but before World War I, the Western world thought to itself that man might free itself from inhumanity.
We could spend paragraphs pointing out the course of hypocrisies that lead Europe to its horrifying collision, but that's not the point of this post. The point is to show that there are certain moments when events happen so quickly, with such dramatic, decisive impact that all analysis is dumb.
Whatever happens with Israel/Iran, whatever there is to talk about with the actual countries involved, the main hope we all should have is that this war does not spread. The importance of that possibility dwarfs everything else about this conflict. Donald Trump committed the US to it with alacrity. I don't know why we're all shocked, but I suppose even I'm a little surprised. There are many reasons Trump might have done it, but I suppose the most likely reason Trump got us involved is to prevent other major powers from involving themselves. If that's the case, then it's probably wiser than it looks.
That's the last time I'll praise Donald Trump for a long while, and if he did it for any other reason, he's as dumb/evil as ever. Has he involved us in yet another quagmire? It's certainly possible, but so long as Netanyahu insists on acting this idiotically, this is the best move to deter China from getting involved, and if China gets involved, the US is going to get involved anyway, and potentially at a far greater price than a quagmire.
It's highly likely that this is not August 1914. This is just a rehearsal, a preview. Never say never, but the very fact that America got involved this quickly dampens the likelihood that other world powers will get involved in this, because if they did, America would eventually get involved anyway, and then it really would be August 1914.
The world is advancing to a point of no return. Personally, I think we're long past the point that we can avoid it, but I don't think this will be the explosion that hurtles the world into something we can't yet fathom. This particular Middle Eastern conflict will probably be over when Bibi wins re-election in 2026, arranges his own pardon and starts planning a successor--and I'm gonna do the unwise and predict that that his re-election's a 'when.' Bibi Netanyahu does not care if a hundred thousand, a million, or ten million people die on his way to reelection, he sees his position as a mixture of messiah and game master. But if this regional war somehow drags on past 2026, there is no limit to what could happen next.
I have said, from the very beginning of this, that I don't support these wars, I just refuse to condemn them. Here's what I said twelve days after October 7th:
"If, on the off chance you care, you're looking for me to say I oppose a ground invasion of Gaza, there is no frozen hell in which that happens. Hamas is Israel's weakest enemy. If Israel doesn't do it, Hezbollah will do worse (than October 7th), and Iran might do still worse than that.
But with every fibre of my being, with every tzim-tzum of my essence, with every one of my soul's five names, I categorically oppose any ground invasion so long as Benyamin Netanyahu leads it, because until Netanyahu is gone, his lust for power will doom it to failure just as he doomed Israel to a day like last week."
Is the Gaza War a success? It might have been had it ended a long time ago, but Netanyahu allowed no end in sight for it. Why is it still going on? Why are Israeli troops implicating themselves in a massacre a day? A proper level of deterrence has so long since been established. If you haven't gotten rid of Hamas yet, you won't be able to, and even if you did, you could enable still worse. The point is that Netanyahu wants worse, just as Hamas does, and they will continue this fight until it's no longer useful for Netanyahu to do so.
I don't know how our people, so accustomed to the ways of the world, can't get it through their thick Yiddisher kops that Netanyahu really is that evil. He doesn't want to get rid of Hamas. He wants perpetual war, because perpetual war keeps him in power. After a year and a half, even the Gaza War wasn't enough to keep him secure there, and so this moment 'just happened to be the time that Iran was weeks away from a nuclear weapon, in spite of that Netanyahu authorized thisnoperation back in late November.
Now, let's allow for the small possibility that Bibi's telling the truth. The assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah's major leaders would obviously spook Iranian leaders (and rightly so it turns out...), so they know that a nuclear weapon is the one thing that will establish their safety. If I were an Iranian leader in September 2024, I'd pour all my money into nuclear research and resources.
But the fact remains that American intelligence released a report saying that Iran is three years away from a nuclear weapon. It's been three years away for... I don't even remember how many years. For twenty years we've heard everything from five years to six months. Is a nuclear Iran a threat to Israel? You better believe it. And with that threat to Israel comes a threat to all the Arabs who live in Israel or in occupied Palestinian territories, along with all Iran's many other enemies and rivals around the Middle East.
But the fact that Israel had such an easy time knocking out so many targets testifies to that this regime is stunningly stupid and corrupt. If Israel knew where this many military targets and leaders were, Iran must leak intelligence like a sieve. No achievement can hold solidly in such a regime. Iran may well have tried to develop a nuclear weapon for twenty years, but if Israel can execute a battle plan this easily, then they could easily have been sabotaging the Iranian nuclear program this whole time, and could go on temporarily sabotaging it for an indefinite future. Sure, it's preferable to take out the program entirely, but not at the risk of a global war. Not even Israel could win that with casualties less than they would incur from a detonated nuclear weapon.
I said at the beginning of this: at a time when events are moving so quickly, analysis is pointless. Why are people fascinated by wars which have no personal connection to them? Because war is the most dramatic of world events: it's a theater whose audience is the entire world. We find it fascinating because its enormity defies analysis. It's horror, heroism, incompetence and unpredictability are the decisive factor of our lives. War is the ultimate determinant of how we shall live, and sometimes, how we shall die. We're all its audience, and for the moment, all we can do is watch.
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