Glenn Diesen on Narrative and Reality

This fascinating discussion elucidates the difficulty of distinguishing narrative from reality. On the question of who started the war, Glenn explains that the narrative that “Israel forced Trump’s hand” was the result of an agreement between Trump and Netanyahu at the end of last year. But this narrative also caused problems, because there was a bipartisan response to the idea that Israel had dragged the US into this very unpopular war for the its benefit. The narrative then shifted to saying that this was Trump’s decision, that he had told Bibi that he was going to start bombing whether Bibi liked it or not. As the region of Palestine formerly known as “Israel” is turned to rubble by Iranian missiles, you might think Bibi would have tried to tell Trump not to do it, but no, Bibi wanted Trump to attack to fulfill his 40-year dream of destroying Iran and instituting Zionist hegemony in West Asia. It look to me like Trump did not really want this war and had a bad feeling about it almost from the beginning but could not resist. He was talked into the idea that he could get away with a quick in-and-out operation like Venezuela. Now he is finding out otherwise. As Glenn Diesen put it, for the first two days, after Khamenei was killed, there was a lot of enthusiasm, but people have rapidly become “a bit more skeptical”. There has been a bipartisan response in Congress to US involvement in the war (whether dragged in by Israel or not) and the American people oppose US involvement by some 70% according to polls. Although Trump is doing his best Hitler imitation, trying to whip up war fever, I don’t think his heart is really in it. So why did he do it, if not orders from Bibi? Is this “Operation Epstein Fury”? Or is it just good old-fashioned Western imperialism, and Israel is nothing but a US proxy for control of West Asia? I would say both. Israel began as a British colony, but with a special twist by being called a Jewish homeland. That special twist uses bowdlerized forms of both the Jewish and Christian religions, called Zionism, which has resulted in a unique situation.

There is further interesting discussion of how the war can easily spread to Turkey via the effort to revive Kurdish nationalism. These nationalist Kurds never learn no matter how often the US betrays them. There are some 25-30 million Kurds, and they are a large minority in four countries – Iran, Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Turkey will be extremely wary of Kurdish nationalists being activated, and will likely join with Iran in opposing it.