When events defy analysis

 

Few things have surprised me the last two years, but so many times I've put my neck onto the line to venture a prediction, and I've gotten it spectacularly wrong. I didn't think he was going to do it. Not so soon at least. I was an idiot.

God knoweth how, but against all evidence I lazily thought Trump would be a deterrent factor, bomb a few of the minor sites, fly some American planes to patrol the airspace, lend Israel the clusterbombs, and leave Israel to do the dirty work. I thought Trump's cowardice would triumph over his powerlust.

As ideologues of every stripe of this conflict could tell you, I am a completely untrustworthy and unreliable analyst.

But some patterns in history are so easy to perceive that even I can see them. One of the patterns is era after era when the establishment squeezes its grip on power so tightly that they lose complete touch with the reality of those they rule. They grow so disconnected with the world that they make a mistake so profound that they facilitate a collapse. Not just of their establishment, not just of their country, but of their entire era. That is the lesson of World War I, that is the lesson of the French Revolution, it's the lesson of the Reformation, of the Thirty Years War, of the Hundred Years War, the fall of the Roman republic, of Emperor Commodus and the Year of the Four Emperors. It's the lesson of the Judean dynasties Hasmonean and Herodian, and I'm sure the lesson confirms itself in instances I know too little of to list. Eventually there arises a ruler, or rulers, whose grip on reality is so vague that he causes a an entire generation of chaos and blood. In the generation that follows, no one is spared stories of grief or horror, and those who fall can only be honored in our memories as those who made the ultimate sacrifice to build the bright and hopeful new world that comes after.

Was the establishment provoked by those of us on the counterestablishment? In a sense, absolutely. But those who oppose the establishment were provoked in turn by prosperous people who would rather risk the ultimate fall than give up their prosperity. And eventually, such questions don't matter at all, because those who value the world will do as they can to help it survive, and those who don't will do all manner of dark things to help themselves survive. Most of us would do both, and most of us will.

Who's right? The politics of every era change, but the core issue never does. There are not two sides to most debates, there are three: Progress, stasis, and regress.

There's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to regress to the way things were, sometimes the way things were is preferable to a progress that doesn't work, but if you choose stasis, you can keep things as they are with minimal tension, but if you choose progress, you have to give something to the regressionists in return, or tensions will escalate, and escalate to the point that you can no longer control them. As Amos Oz said, compromise is life, and without compromise there is only death and fanaticism.

There are many issues on which we have to progress as a society: social and economic issues particularly. There are certain issues like national security where it's become quite clear that regression to vigilance might have saved us electoral interference from Russia and an unstable relationship with China--who, by the way, gets half their oil from Iran. Now we have a bastardized regression that mistakens offense for deterrence. This is not regression, this is regressive fundamentalism: fundamentalism no less dangerous than the radical Islam of Iran. The modern American right may not have beliefs as murderous as the other, but the American right has a million times the power, and next to no commitment to using it responsibly. When you lead the world, every flaw in belief accumulates exponentially like a butterfly effect, and before you know it your desire for tax cuts can put the world on a course that causes the death of billions.

Are we at August 1914 yet? Probably not. But surely things bad enough are coming.

What would I do if I were Iran's supreme leader? The answer is simple now. I wouldn't go after Israel, I'd go after the US. Bombing an Israeli hospital? That's no way to establish your prestige on the world stage (such as it is). Bomb America? Bomb something like the World Trade Center? THAT is a way to make America's opposition view Iran with respect.

It would be all too easy. Credible sources tell us that iran's sleeper terror cells are very real, and a function of a border that's too open--I support enormous waves of immigration, so long as everyone is VETTED. But even if it's not real, Iran doesn't need sleeper cells. Such is today's internet radicalization that lost youth will all but come to them: asking how they can help, how they can fight, how they can martyr themselves and butcher others.

The Trump administration has piled our national security wall high with official jokes. Not a single national security appointee is qualified for their job. Not a one. And it's almost like that's what Trump wants...

How did Putin become the Vladimir Putin we all know and love? Because of the 1999 apartment bombings. Four bombs that went off in apartment buildings in three Russian cities. Thus began the Second Chechen War. Did Chechnya do it or did Putin? Putin wasn't Russia's president yet, just another one of Yeltsin's heirs apparent. Still... probably. But after it happens, it doesn't really matter, because it's the perfect opportunity for an authoritarian power grab. Just like the Reichstag fire.

I have a good friend, an Israeli of perfectly sane politics, tell me that he strongly suspects that Netanyahu... well... he doesn't suspect Bibi of involvement in October 7th, he just suspects Bibi he left the door open, thinking Hamas would break through and kill twenty people. Excuse enough to distract Israelis with another war while his power is embattled, but not excuse enough to go down in history as Israel's worst day and level Gaza with more bombs than the US ever used in Iraq and Afghanistan combined over 20 years.

The playbook for this move has been written so many times, from Hitler to Putin, to Netanyahu's accidental power grab (which I suspects secretly delights him), it would be easy for Trump to maximize his power in the event of a major terror attack. Of course, it would be easier if some other country did it, but if it takes long enough, who can doubt by now that Trump has the will to power to do it himself?

Yet not even Israel had the bombs to level the Iranian nuclear program. The main part of Iran's nuclear program's buried deep in the mountains of Northern Iran, and only an American bunker buster can reach it. A conventional bunker buster is an immensely powerful weapon, for a conventional weapon. But then there's the nuclear. I doubt even Trump would use a nuclear bunker buster... yet... but a nuclear bunker buster, rather than a conventional, yields explosive power that vastly exceeds what was dropped on Hiroahima and Nagasaki.

Events this large defy analysis. They cannot be predicted, they can only be described. If this is Auguat 1914 or June 1789, you will remember every detail of this month fir the rest of your lives: where you were and how you heard as we took every step to war in an era when war means unprecedented destruction and mourning.

It still doesn't seem like that, but of we came so close, we can come much closer.