As I sat down to write this dispatch, like anyone else following world happenings in an even cursory manner I found myself overwhelmed by the urge to continue absorbing minute-by-minute coverage of the monstrous US and Israel war on Iran. As I have been doing nearly every waking hour since the shooting began.
Why? Because I am a child of the Cold War—which on a few occasions between my birth and my mid-20s (when the Soviet Union fell apart) came horribly close to becoming the hot war to end all wars. Something I’ve written about in brief from time to time.
So, I am well aware of how this particular war has made the threat of nuclear conflagration more tangible than it has been since the early 1980s. Given that two nuclear powers, the US and Israel, are attacking a potential nuclear power, Iran—a nation that borders another nuclear power, Pakistan, and is only one country away from three more, China, India, and Russia. And fear of that nightmarish outcome keeps me glued to whatever screen in closest to hand at any moment.
Yet I’m finding it extremely difficult to weave together the wildly diverse array of conflicting information about the present conflict that I find online into some kind of coherent picture of the real situation on the ground.
Even though I habitually search for data and analysis from around the world and across the ideological spectrum, much of the information on the war is extremely difficult for anyone not running the war to verify.
Thus I’m forced to consume contradictory content like everyone else.
Some examples:
Israel is largely responsible for starting the war. The US is largely responsible for starting the war.
The Trump administration is completely out of its depth with its attempt to make war on Iran. The Trump administration has things well in hand.
Iran is winning the war. The US is winning the war.
The war is really about the US versus China and Russia. The war is really about the US and Israel versus Iran.
There are negotiations taking place between Iran and the US. There are not negotiations taking place.
All of which makes it difficult to ascertain if my overriding strategic concern has any merit: that one or more of the combatant and bystander nations might be crazy enough to start tossing nukes around.
So I thought I’d just chime in to say that I wish I could think of anything else but the war right now. But I can’t. Nor can I easily recommend any course of action that readers who share my antiwar views might take at the present time other than to suggest that people should find ways to oppose the war, slow it up, and help stop it as fast as possible.
Which brings me to a brief discursus on the big protest of the moment.
I’ve certainly thought—and other commentators on the broad left have tried to demonstrate—that the series of “No Kings” protests since Trump came back to office last year are basically organized by the kind of well-connected people (in this case representing the Democratic Party wing of the American ruling class) who have orchestrated “color revolutions” in other countries in support of US-based corporate interests.
However, I’m also aware of relevant history like when workers in the auto and steel industry were forced to participate in fake “company unions” and then many of the same workers turned around and organized powerful independent labor unions in the 1930s.
Meaning that I’m fine with suggesting that antiwar folks participate in tomorrow’s latest “No Kings” protest because pushing the antiwar message strongly at such a questionable event can help turn it and similar protests to follow into something better than their top organizers intended … up to and including a mass movement that will topple the corrupt center-right capitalist Democratic Party and replace it with an actual “small d” party of democracy (and perhaps even socialism).
Whichever way all this political ferment plays out, my thoughts are with all the thousands of innocent people who have been killed and maimed in the war so far. Especially the children.
My hope is that millions more won’t ultimately die in this most recent senseless round of conflict instigated by the US and Israel.
Apparent Horizon—an award-winning political column—is syndicated by the MassWire news service of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism.
