Red Flags and Red Herrings
To the editor:
“Easily won” has been spoken many times at the beginning of many long, drawnout wars, United States involvement or not, for over 150 years. And that’s just what I can point toward. A true Historian can point to, well, probably all of history, and now they can add our involvement in Iran as well.
Those words are always a red flag, often followed by a red herring. They are a red flag in that they spotlight a regime’s overconfidence in its often incompetent leadership. The louder, ALL CAPS RANTINGS of our leaders on social media are just one small piece of evidence demonstrating their inability to not yell premature victories at us. The red herring pops up like Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day. This time, Phil is looking for something suspicious; spoiler alert: it’s always about weapons of mass destruction these days. However, seeing his own shadow of lies, he crawls back into his foxhole to prepare for several more years of conflict. That is, after he ruthlessly murders a few dozen school children in the name of peace.
I am always amazed at how, deep down, as a nation, we destroy the very countries we seek to become. An allpowerful dictator has been the ultimate goal of the Republican Party and now they have one. The same people who aim to kill United States citizens in our streets venerate the moral values of the Iranian government. They eschew protests, equal rights, and even free will. I bet they would even shoot a dog because of their own inability to train it - oops, sorry, I forgot we already had that one on our bingo card. The exorbitant flippancy when distributing war plans through a social chat defines their utter lack of respect for the war machine which they control. Even the dark web does a spit take at their audacity and temporarily seizes for a moment in time.
Pomp and circumstance aside, I think the reason Republicans love war so much is that they do not deal with the aftermath, economically or emotionally. Being so good at profiteering makes the idle consequence of lost lives seem minuscule. Also, any retribution by the enemy comes at the expense of a blue state or city because those are major metropolitan areas of culture. If terrorists were smart, they would target red states where the warmongering, ALL CAPS LOVING electorate largely resides. Wait…did you hear that?...I think the dark web just did another spit take.
The Iran war is unlikely to come to any reasonable end that does not consume taxpayer money, strip away healthcare, bottom out the economy (even further), and bring us closer in likeness to our enemies than ever before. And that’s just the tangible damage to our home team. The intangible comes as the rest of the world looks at the USA out of the corner of their eyes and takes a deep breath, like we’re the embarrassing, drunk cousins at the family barbecue. In the meantime, we can enjoy reports of war operations being “ahead of schedule” as if we’re on a bus route to work. On the bright side, maybe a tanked economy means five less ICE agents on our streets. Always look on the bright side of life, right?