https://therenovator.substack.com/p/operation-epic-fury-a-civilizational
"Since President Trump launched the war against Iran almost a month ago, I have
struggled to respond using the language of Loyal Opposition.
I might have decried the decision to launch a war without congressional
authorization. But let’s be honest: Congress has been debating whether to
authorize military action in Iran since June and taken no action. On Jan. 23,
Trump announced that he was sending an “armada” toward Iran. On Jan. 26, The
USS Abraham Lincoln and its carrier strike group arrived in the Middle East.
Congress had plenty of opportunity to exercise its authorities and chose not
to. Every person who chants “No Kings!” should follow that with “Save
Congress.” A Congress that brings a consequential debate to conclusion and
decision in a timely fashion is the only answer to a president who operates as
king.
And sometimes, the place to point the finger is at Congress, not the president.
This is one of those times.
I do decry the remarkable underestimation of the Iranian nation. In the 1990s,
I worked for an Iranian documentary filmmaker who was narrating the story of
pro-democracy women writers and artists in Iran. I spent hours watching her raw
footage from bustling Tehran, ancient Isfahan, and beautiful mountains, plains
and valleys. In one especially powerful stretch of footage, throngs of
bare-chested young men marched through Iranian streets to commemorate the
Battle of Karbala, a founding event for Shia Islam. As they marched in a ritual
of mourning for a martyr, the young men beat their own backs with short leather
thongs. I had never seen such intense commitment.
That Iran is home to a long-lived and impressive civilization is clear. That
its modern regime also posed a substantial danger to global peace — and its own
people, so many of whom were killed in January simply for assembling to express
their grievances with their government — is equally clear. Finding the path
forward between those two facts has been a generational challenge for American
presidents.
What has disturbed me most of all, though, is how we are fighting this war:
Operation Epic Fury. In ancient Greece, the mythical Furies terrified people,
not because anger itself is scary (though it is), but because when the Furies
appeared, they inevitably unleashed cycles of vendetta that were exceptionally
hard to end. Revenge begets revenge."
Via
Global Terrorism Has Been Shrinking for a Decade:
<
https://theprogressnetwork.substack.com/p/global-terrorism-has-been-shrinking>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
