Epic Fury is an epic folly

What happens when the name of a military operation sounds more like a pitch for a PlayStation 3 game than a sober decision made by the adults in the room?

Epic Fury: immature, but apt, perhaps, in a war led by people whose only moral is destruction. Now the US and Israel’s decision to shock the world by raining down bombs on Iran has set off a chain of events that no one can predict.

You’ve probably put more strategic planning into games of Risk, where at least the player understands they’re rolling the dice.

We may be a community newspaper first and foremost, but in this interconnected world we live in, what’s happening on the other side of the world matters to all of us.

And whether you learned about the war by listening to the radio, reading the newspaper, or asking about your gas receipt, we’re sure it’s on your mind, too.

That’s why from time to time we need to plant our fingers firmly on the zoom out button and take a look at events that are happening far away, but still feel close to home.

When violence and terror break out, our thoughts become preoccupied with the suffering wrought by war, the human beings who are being hurt or killed for situations beyond their control. In a case like this, we even worry about the possibility of an apocalyptic global war.

This is a real risk of modern warfare. Weapons are as cheap and advanced as any other modern tech, and the threat of nuclear war looms even if we are inured to it.

Of course, if this war had any clear objectives, obliterating Iran’s nuclear program would be one of them - there’s been no commitment on that, plus Trump already said the program was obliterated just last year. The goals and explanations ebb and flow as convenient, an impression backed up by US senators’ reports of intelligence briefings that expose a shocking lack of clarity on the mission.

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, currently wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Gaza, has been portraying Iran as months or weeks away from the bomb for decades, and he finally found a president easy enough to drag by the hand.

That’s to say nothing of Trump’s impetuous decision to tear up an Obama-era agreement with Iran that limited its nuclear ambitions, a diplomatic solution that actually had some promises of safety.

Now we have Epic Fury.

The 86-year-old hardline supreme leader of Iran was killed. So, inadvertently, were all of his potential US-approved replacements. Iran’s new hardline supreme leader is 30 years younger and shares the same last name.

Now what?

The secretary of defense has been rebranded the secretary of war. This man, Pete Hegseth, whose hair gel seems to have breached the blood-brain barrier, a TV personality who is so vain that he has reportedly banned photographers for publishing unflattering photos of him amid the bombings, is the perfect personification of this war.

This is what he had to say last year about the new US military: “Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.”

What is a politically correct war? One that at least pretends to have principles, we suppose.

Instead, we get memes - yes, memes - from the White House. (Nelly’s “Here Comes the Boom” as backdrop to footage of bombs dropping, for instance.)

On the very first day of the action, an elementary school was bombed, killing at least 175 people, mostly children. Preliminary investigations are bearing out that it was the US that committed this grievous act (in yet another disrespect to Onkwehón:we, the type of bomb used is called a “tomahawk”).

And it’s just one instance: other schools and hospitals have also been destroyed.

In the past few months, waves of protest in Iran against the Iranian regime were brutally crushed, with Iran massacring its own people. But Trump’s urging of Iran’s citizens to seize on the bombing to reclaim their destiny rang hollow.

How can a flurry of violence wrought by outside forces in this manner promote self-determination? This isn’t the way to buoy a people seeking freedom and justice.

The Iranian people are also horrified to see their cultural treasures destroyed by Western aggression, and not very likely seeing it as a sign of support.

The Golestan Palace, dating to the 14th century. The Jameh Mosque, an architectural marvel over 1,000 years in the making. The Ali Qapu Palace, the Chehel Sotoun palace and garden. All are seriously damaged.

A colonial failure to respect history and culture is well established, as are the serious harms such destruction can do to a people. That’s why these sites are supposed to be protected by international law.

But Trump and Netanyahu are not guided by international law, they scorn it - to the grave detriment not only of global safety but to their own national interests as well.

Perhaps they are guided by individual motives - Trump is in the Epstein files thousands of times over, after all, and Netanyahu is facing bribery, fraud, and breach of trust charges in Israel.

The aggressors failed to build a consensus for this war. They’ve failed to outline clear objectives. And now, Trump contemplates escalation with ground troops after backing himself into a corner.

Did they think even one week ahead, to Iran littering the Strait of Hormuz with mines, which it can easily do, cutting off a huge portion of the world’s oil supply from reaching market? This is already being felt at gas pumps, but soon it will be felt in the cost of everything, including groceries, which have already skyrocketed in recent years. (The US, stingy with food support, has already spent over $10 billion on this war.)

It’s a shame more has not been done to ease reliance on fossil fuels, as Indigenous leaders have been advocating for ages, and it’s frustrating to know this will ironically galvanize the drill-baby-drill set.

While the US toughens up on Iran, it eases up on oil sanctions targeting Russia, which continues to terrorize Ukraine as it seeks to peel off a hefty part of it. Just one of many details exposing the shaky moral foundations of the Iran campaign and the global race to the bottom.

Meanwhile, Iran has plenty of bombing capability itself, and it is now unleashing a flurry of drones that are cheap, plentiful, and can travel 2,500 KM, far enough to reach Greece. These drones can be set off from mobile launchers, making anywhere in the world a potential target with the right maneuvering.

It’s no surprise that the war is spreading, with Iran attacking its neighbours and Israel expanding bombing into Lebanon.

Most world leaders reacted tepidly when the news broke of the Iran bombing, looking to hedge their bets, but not Canadian prime minister Mark Carney. Just weeks after wowing the international community with his Davos speech, he rushed out a foolish statement essentially backing the bombing.

Well, that didn’t age well. He was so roundly criticized for skipping out on the House of Commons in the wake of the war that he had to change his plans.

He said Canada will not join the effort and will never join the effort. But while he might want to try to walk back his statement while having it both ways, he has already done tremendous damage by aligning this country with a breach of international law and norms. Pure arrogance.

Solidarity is the path to justice. And reckless, immature people have no business rolling the dice on war.

TED Staff