Brinksmanship
Or Words Have Meaning
At 6 PM yesterday, I sat in my back yard considering what the world might look like in another two hours. I’d spent much of the day attempting to remain normal in a way only the blissfully unaware can be, and in that I am not capable.
Donald Trump, via a Truth-social post, had threatened the eradication of an entire civilization after the war he started without debate or approval, claimed he won, kept fighting without clear and established objectives, escalated and still didn’t win, again wasn’t going his way. I wondered if the beer I was sipping was the last one I’d get to enjoy in the muddled world in which we live, one which would be forever changed by the employment of a nuclear weapon. And it started on Easter Sunday.
An idyll punctuated by the call of quarreling geese, the birds chirped, the wind rustled the early Spring leaves, and the evening sun glanced off the hills. I watched this and considered the conversation I overheard at the gym of men talking of their stock portfolios (“the Dow is soaring, and I’m doing GREAT, you know!) and the advantages MOPAR has over Ferrari. All in a normal day in America where overseas wars are elsewhere and someone else’s problem, all while our president talks of armageddon amidst the backdrop of Brinksmanship . No one gave a shit, in other words. This was a far cry from my youth, where we lived in the United States under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation.
Growing up in Reagan’s America during the 1980s was wild. The middle class was slowly being destroyed, tax breaks and profiteering were enabling the rich to become richer, trickle down economics was the rage as it was mistaken to work, and the country only contended with one big threat: Communism as embodied in the Soviet Union. It was a simpler time, one where negotiations to reduce nuclear armaments were considered success. We never did get rid of them, but the fear of their use prevented their employment.
In 1983, a terrifying movie called The Day After premiered on television. It was so disturbing it was also shown to the Russians to illustrate the futility of even a limited nuclear exchange between the two powers. This was followed in 1984 by the British film, Threads, which was darker and yet more horrifying. Both films illustrated that post-nuclear survival was impossible and the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction must be adhered to if there was to be any hope to avert nuclear catastrophe.
The Quaker school I attended was a hotbed of anti-war and anti-nuclear activity. The teachers regularly attended protests in Washington, D.C. and we hosted a Russian student delegation for peace in 1984. In 1985, the musician, Sting, wrote a haunting song called, Russians, on his debut solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, wherein he sings “I hope the Russians love their children too.”
That same year, the Canadian rock trio, Rush, also wrote of the corruptive power of nuclear weapons in their song, Manhattan Project, from the seminal Power Windows album. “Whoever found it first, would be sure to do their worst. They always had before.”
The walls of my school were adorned with posters like the one below published by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Nuclear war was a part of our culture.
As the 1980s continued, we were entreated to films like Wargames, Red Dawn, and Rambo III. At the end of the Cold War in ~1991, America emerged victorious and the threat of nuclear destruction was conveniently packaged away. But nothing has changed. America and Russia sit on ~5000 nuclear weapons each and many other countries possess the bomb as well. Thus, the nukes didn’t go away, we were just told not to worry about them anymore. Yay, us.
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I thought about this last night when Ol Donny apparently had a change of heart and decided, in his magnanimity, not to drop the bomb on Tehran, or whatever approximation he envisioned. Whether Trump was attempting to goad Iran into acting to justify his own plan or himself bluffing we will never know. This is in keeping with the administration’s opaque reporting on the war and ensuring the American people remain uninformed about what is truly happening.
While I breathed a sigh of relief, I am also taken aback at what I saw this morning. Donald Trump is being called a person of mercy and Pete Hegseth is declaring U.S. victory in the war because of a two-week cease fire agreement, which shouldn’t be confused with a cessation of hostilities. God, how did we get so bloody off track? Only someone like him could peddle this bullshit, though I believe he harbors Dr. Strangelove fantasies about riding the bomb like Slim Pickens.
Trump is no peacemaker and the U.S. wasn’t successful in ANY part of this ill-conceived debacle. Further disturbing is the rabid support of Iran’s destruction by members of the House like Louisiana Representative Clay Higgins, (R). He said:
Higgins’ post includes a picture of an armored angel wielding a glowing sword.
And this gem from a friend of mine’s Facebook feed as he protested the war:
“We can’t kill enough of that Islamic jihadi regime. The lower we continue to go in killing their chain of command, the better. Stack those names like cordwood. How many of our brothers and sisters have been maimed and killed from their sponsored suicide bombings, EFP’s and proxies? Regardless about you feel about Israel, every name I see from their leadership struck off the list and military assets destroyed is a small vindication, but that is just me.”
Oh, joy.
Therein lies the problem. This madness must stop, but the madmen must first come to that conclusion. We have elected officials who take glee about destroying Iran while our Congress remains largely silent that our president is not only talking about committing war crimes, but also crimes against humanity. He means every word of it and there are constituents in this country who support him.
All it demonstrates is the feckless and spineless people who run this country don’t care. It isn’t isolated to the Right, either. Where the fuck are you, Chuck Schumer, as you glare over your readers, patronizing us with empty promises for action? Likely waiting for your next corporate bribe to clear your bank account, I wager.
They sit and wring their hands, chirp about invoking the 25th Amendment, and standby listlessly as our president leads through shitposting as his primary means of communicating. All of this is downplayed by the corporate media and we move from hundreds of civilians daily being killed in Iran and Lebanon to a fun margarita recipe to accompany your Master’s Watch Party in the same thread. Don’t worry about American casualties, either, since there aren’t any to report.
Two weeks ago, I addressed the National Press Club as part of the Eisenhower Media Network’s panel discussion regarding the war in Iran. It can be seen in its entirety here and I begin at ~2:22 hour mark and serve on a panel discussion afterwards. I encourage you to watch/listen to the entire program, however, since there are some phenomenal speakers. It was covered by small-press and independent journalists. I saw no one from any mainstream or corporate media in the audience. Then again, the NPC didn’t even list it on their website’s calendar. But the small voices still matter.
In 1985 I agreed with Sting. I believe the Russians did and do love their children. Just as I believe the Iranian’s love their own children even if Iran’s government is indeed problematic, as I have said, and repressive and full of human rights abuses. While we are no paragon, I am making no apologies for them, either. However, they don’t deserve to be nuked.
In all of my years as an international and strategic studies security professional, the one move I never had on the card was the United States as the aggressor. Shows what I know, but I can say with conviction that this kind of never ending war culminating with a nuclear detonation cannot be viewed as being normal.
But it is.
Thanks for sticking with me.
I just watched your comments as well as some of Lt. Col. Aguilar’s. I appreciate you both speaking up. I have some hope that people are waking up to the “fooling the audience” tactic and demanding better from our leaders. I think part of that tactic is a manipulation of Aguilar’s characterization of jus ad bellum. It’s an attempt (barely) to make these operations sound righteous and proper, but luckily, I think more and more people are realizing the truth in what you’ve said about selling forever wars.