The Iran-Israel War has been unfolding for 43 days now, in full view of the world, with all its gravity. In the back of our minds, however, there is a comedy playing out.
The political institution — no less than any other — has managed to establish the absolute truth of the fables it tells; the sole requirement for legitimacy has become the ability to lie, and as liars keep getting elected, the pressure of selection has kept tilting toward mendacity.
Here, then, is nature’s greatest liar, not its greatest mind: the human being.
US President Trump, in order to “destroy their civilization and send them back to the Stone Age,” laid waste to Iran’s defense capacity along with its petrochemical plants, steel production facilities, pharmaceutical factories, universities, schools, hospitals, banks, ports, airports, bridges, railways, and electrical grid.
The United States and Israel officially invoke the doctrine of “preemptive self-defense,” claiming that Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missile capacity constitute an “imminent threat.” Yet international law does not permit such action without either a UN Security Council resolution or an act of direct armed aggression to defend against. In the short term, however, the one holding the gun prevails over the one holding the law.
Iran’s government is composed of despots who seized power through endless deception and imposed their dominion over the people. But can the United States be the one to punish them? Does being the world’s most powerful nation not require delivering fair income distribution, peace, and equality of opportunity to one’s own people before setting out to punish others? How can a state that cannot provide healthcare to its own citizens claim legitimacy in destroying one of the rare countries that can?
It cannot, of course. But being powerful means precisely being exempt from legitimacy. Empires do not grow by being just, honest, or virtuous; it is not fair societies that rule the world. The United States, China, and Russia are decisive in global politics because they exploit their own peoples. This runs against our intuitions — yet if we recognize that foreign policy and domestic policy run in parallel, that the war abroad is the other face of the law at home, we can begin to understand why Europe has been steadily losing its standing. Europe’s capacity for deception is shrinking, along with its weapons. The US-Israel coalition, meanwhile, is expanding both its arsenal — especially its financial weapons — and its lies. Money is the greatest lie; politics is not far behind. They never let their myths out of their mouths, and they do what their people desire.
The American people elected Trump because he was famous and a “winner,” not because he was just. Trump was rewarded for deceiving his people well. Netanyahu was elected by riding the nationalism of an Israeli mythology whose majority is European and whose history barely stretches back a hundred years — rewarded not for defending facts and rights, but for feeding lies. Iran, too, is a country living out the desires of its people. Iranian leaders say they are working to uphold the claim of Islam. Perhaps they are rendering the greatest service of modern times by becoming martyrs — and in doing so, may have set in motion a process that will bring about the end of the American Empire and its satellite.
This war is not legitimate in terms of how it was started; but in terms of how it has come to pass, it is a necessity of their own political mythologies. For countries armed with imperial narratives and grand causes, lies do not generate legitimacy — but the wars that arise from those lies are, as the continuation of politics, inevitable.
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” — Frank Outlaw
