I continue to abhor military violence.
I can still understand how, by the rules the United States and Israel play by, Iran’s direct attack is entirely “fair.” With state violence, “fair” only illustrates how fucking insane the game is. Each side and their powerful are responsible for their own actions, but those who write the rules and effectively own the board or who have weighted the dice have more overall responsibility.
I think it is stupid, as are nearly all of the previous events that are justified by the previous event, and so on, and generally, previous military violence in human history. I leave some room for truly having to stop overwhelming occupation and attempts at it, but not uncritically, and not without a jaundiced eye to opportunities missed before and during such stages of conflict.
These cruxes in conflict remind me that it often seems nearly all those with the power of militaries at their hand do not care about human life, no matter the rhetoric of defense. If it seems that they genuinely do to some degree, it is too easy to find their parochial limits. These petty constraints resulting in classes of those worthwhile and those not are an ironic product of playing god.
Speaking of gods, the cynicism of these wars vociferously supported by the arch-conservatives of some of our world’s major religions belies their supposed faith in the expectation to be judged and have their swords beat into plowshares.
We do not need anyone’s god to do that, if we wanted.
This fatalism is not faith, it is the worst cynicism.