Between January and March of 2020, I wrote a 24-part series condemning the idea of war with Iran. I then reluctantly added a 25th part last April. I’m not going to repeat any part of that performance now. If you want to read it, click the “War with Iran” tag. Suffice it to say that I knew this day was coming, did my inept share of tilting at windmills about it, and now it’s here.

We’re now being told by the mainstream media that Israel’s war will (whatever Trump’s scruples or pretended scruples) require American assistance. Like its “wars” in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, and Yemen, Israel’s war with Iran must now become our war. God only knows how many people must die so that “Judeo-Christian Civilization” as these war-addicted people term it, is to be advanced. Of course, “must” is a figure of speech. There’s no actual necessity here, just self-made insanity. No one had to die. But lots will.

This war is a bare, naked, blatantly obvious act of aggression by Israel. Strenuous efforts will be made to rationalize it. Defamations will proliferate against its critics. But nothing can alter the obvious inferences to be drawn. The attack was unjustified; it came about only because Israel is a regime of institutionalized sociopathy enabled by a West that shares the same trait.

I know it’s “inadvisable” to say all that in public, but when a truth as obvious as 2 + 2 = 4 becomes taboo, you’re living in an Orwellian universe where the usual standards of “advisability” have lost all meaning. If after Gaza and after Iran, support for Israel remains a sine qua non of civilized life, then I’ll make do in the jungle, because it can’t be any worse than this.

Human beings at their worst are the worst of the animals, says Aristotle. Something similar might be said of Western Civilization, of which Israel is so proud a member. I don’t mean that the West is uniformly worse than any other civilization. Viewed from a purely moral perspective, they all suck. But if there was a variable that measured the contrast between successfully cultivated reputation and actual rap sheet, the West would max out on it, Israel above all.

No one thinks of Russia or China or Iran as paragons of moral achievement, and they aren’t. But Israel was supposed to be different, a veritable miracle of moral rectitude. Turns out not. Turns out it’s just the shitty little country that its worst enemies have always thought it was. It’s taken me decades to reach that conclusion. I resisted for awhile. But the Israelis were relentless in their dogged pursuit of evil ends by evil means. I give them credit for the effort involved. I’m there.