Mad Max Trump and Thunderdome Netanyahu have taken the world to war again, offering us a pre-apocalyptic picture of apprehensions, vulnerabilities, catastrophes and consequences to come, pretending an existential threat to them when they, themselves, are a real threat to the world and their own countries. For anyone with even a modicum of historical knowledge knows there will be consequences, blowback and strike back of various defensive, retributive, disruptive and destructive kinds. Representing the savagery of the civilization they claim to be protecting, they continue to wage a genocidal war against the people of Palestine and glory in language of epic fury, bloodlust and carnage as they now attack Iran. Joined at the hip, heart and head in racist thoughts and imperialist thuggery, they have begun an immoral, illegal and illogical aggression against Iran which is posed as a war of necessity but is clearly a war of calculated criminal choice.
It is immoral because it has no just cause, its claims are infested with lies and gaslighting illusions, and its consequences to the Iranian people, others and the world are senseless, needless and wide spread death and destruction. It is illegal because it violates domestic law, the Constitutional requirement for Congress to declare war. And it violates international law which requires UN approval of the war as justified and prohibits aggression against the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of a people and is considered one of the most serious crimes and concerns of humanity. Indeed, as the sacred text, Odu Ifa, teaches “War ruins the world” and all in it and thus, affects us all.
And this war is illogical, for its camouflaged excuses are contradictory and continuously concocted and changed post facto, and it is hostile to sound moral and political reasoning, reasoning about respecting and saving human life, protecting the earth, privileging peace, and rightly choosing negotiation and diplomacy rather than mutual destruction. Indeed, much of what the US wanted was agreed to, and yet, following Israel’s model of bombing to kill the Palestinian negotiators during the ceasefire negotiations, the US and Israel launched their war of aggression against Iran while talks still were ongoing and promising.
As they go to war, their war cry is the early man concept and practice of beheading the enemy, whether persons or whole peoples, calling it “decapitation” to make it sound less savage. But whether they call it decapitation, targeted killing, wet work, assassination or some other word, it is rooted in and reflective of a culture of war worshipping and beheading and celebrating it by dancing around the fire and asking the whole group to join the celebration. The circles of fire are gone but the bloodlust and the calls to celebrate beheadings are still present as nightly news, accounts and announcements of enemies bombed and decapitated, not only enemy heads of state and leaders, but also everyday people and little girls at school in Iran or at all ordinary places and special spaces in Palestine. As Trump stated, taking a page out of Netanyahu’s killing-fields warbook for genocide in Palestine, “Bombs will be dropping everywhere”.
And they have cultivated and coerced a cast of obsequious and cartoonist characters around them to call out when prompted “off with their heads; off with their heads” as the first and last solution to an endless list of problems. Thus, whether it’s an attempt to decapitate or behead the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and genocide or the officially-declared threatening and problematic Iranian government, they must be beheaded, killed as both a preferred solution and a terrorizing sign and signal to others of their vulnerability and of the viciousness and vengefulness of the long imperialist axe. Indeed, in spite of the pablum of promises to put America first, we are told by a Republican senator and born again MAGA acolyte trying to justify the unjustifiable war that really, “America First is to kill people who wish us ill with a record of trying to destroy us in the region”, i.e., The Middle East, Western Asia, a region of great imperial interests and coerced and expected regional compliance.
If we are to ever get out of this moral desert created by the death cult of war and wealth worshippers, Americans must give up the moral evasion that characterizes so many of their ongoing positions on critical issues facing this country and the world. It is not enough to lament Trump’s not following procedures and breaking laws, we must also stress the central moral concern of this issue which is the commitment to kill without conscience and to brag on quick massive and effective slaughter by the US and Israel. It is as if we felt comfortable applauding and praising the Nazis blitzkriege or lightning wars and practices of genocide and carnage against Jews, Gentiles and peoples of color designated as unworthy of life and freedom. Indeed, it is rejection of this morally vicious and vulgar practice that opens the way to honestly confronting all other issues.
Let’s be honest, we must also deal with the elephant of ethical issues represented by Israel in the room. And we cannot continue to favor, fund, foster and even follow Israel in its genocidal and imperial wars against Palestine, Iran, Lebanon and elsewhere. Israel, clearly a client state, is also secure in its ability to shape US domestic and foreign policy as recent discussions and events reaffirm. Indeed, according to a New York Times article, Netanyahu has bragged about this in a secretly recorded 2001 conversation, saying “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction.” Thus, Israel dragged the US into both wars against Iran for its own interests.
Also, important here is the loss of a critical moral force in American society in which too many Jewish Zionists and Christian Zionists have sacrificed the best of their faiths for the worst of their feelings and fantasies about Palestinians, especially on the issues of genocide in Palestine and the equal human worth and rights of the Palestinian people. And this has led to brutal suppression of campuses and persons and communities of all kinds, including Jews, themselves, but especially Palestinians and Muslims, here and around the world who dare speak out and struggle for the equal worth and human rights of Palestinians and all human beings.
There is no person or people in the world who has moral immunity from criticism, and no oppressor who has equal moral status to the oppressed or a greater claim to rights of self-determination, security and conditions for a good and meaningful life. If an oppressor has the same moral status as the oppressed and is also posed and treated as superior, then there is no right or justice in the world, and there is no moral problem or social penalty in oppressing those who are less powerful and less capable than others.
It is also important to reject and resist the Hitlerian lie that Trump and Netanyahu have any real concern for the Iranian people and their right to be free from oppression whom they are bombing and beheading with what they admit is a fury of overwhelming violence. An invader and oppressor cannot bring freedom; the people themselves must wage the decisive struggle to free themselves and direct the course of the lives and future whether in Iran or Palestine.
And finally concerning the issue of existential threat, one of the greatest threats to a people is itself, if it is addicted to illusions and fantasies about itself and others. This makes it deaf to truth, blind to injustice, vulnerable to moral evasion and ultimately to destroying itself. For a society that cannot see and concede its own problems cannot solve its problems. And a society that cannot solve its problems cannot survive its problems.
