The Intercept reports that Trump is menacing Iran with a massive armada capable of prolonged war. The Times of Israel is talking about a “countdown” to war. The Washington Post reports that satellite imagery shows a rapid increase of US military planes near Iran. Responsible Statecraft’s lead story concerns the inadequacy of airpower to achieve Trump’s stated goals in Iran: ground troops would be required. The Guardian’s top five stories concern the imminence of a US attack on Iran, same with Reuters. The Financial Times has a top story on the imminent Iran war as a crisis of Trump’s own making.

Meanwhile, The New York Times’s lead story is an earnest discussion of the would-be consequences of a hypothetical Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which is expected (by officials in the Trump administration) to come a year or two from now, maybe in 2027, maybe 2028, maybe later, maybe never.  A hypothetically possible war years from now trumps an imminent war that’s rumored to begin today or tomorrow. The Times isn’t alone in ignoring Iran. The Wall Street Journal has put it on the back burner, too. But why? Why would the US’s paper of record ignore the fact that the United States was on the brink of a gigantic, potentally catastrophic war?

One possibility is that everyone but the Times is in the grips of a gigantic illusion. There is no imminent war, or else there is one, but it’s not a big deal. The Times knows this, but no one else does.

Another possibility is that it knows full well that a war is coming, but prefers to treat the war as fait accompli, so that when it comes, the whole thing comes as a surprise to readers, who can then be relied on to crave a focus on the spectacular “shock and awe” dimension of the war itself–minutiae about this explosion produced by this weapons system at this location–rather than as a coherent news story with a preface that long predates the beginning of the war.

Skyline view of Tehran (photo credit: Ninara of Helsinki, Finland, Wikimedia Commons)

A coherent series of stories would preface the war in this sense: it would establish beyond any shadow of a doubt that the war was an egregious act of aggression by the United States against Iran, which followed an under-reported sequence of gunboat diplomacy during which the United States deliberately chose to “negotiate” with Iran under the shadow of the armada it was assembling for war. Precisely for this reason, the preface is absent as a preface in the Times. There are stories on the coming war, pro forma, to avoid the accusation that it ignored the issue entirely. But they’re there pro forma. They’re not the emphasis, and certainly not part of any overarching narrative about imperial aggression. 

The implicit story is: We are an empire. Imperial wars are what we do. Our destiny is to bestride the war as its global hegemon, bringing it under control by force of arms. Best to do this in a responsible manner by taking a long-term perspective. Best then to focus on the unreal would-be war over Taiwan, tying the prospects of that war to the prospects of your next cellphone purchase, than the imminent war over Iran, which can’t be sold in any comparably salvific way, and is also too unpleasantly real, being just around the corner.

The implicit story is a normalization of the aggressions and atrocities of empire. As Cardinal Newman put it, a century ago, from Dublin, of all places, in the heart of the British Empire:

We count it a great thing, and justly so, to plan and carry out a wide political organization. To bring under one yoke, after the manner of old Rome, a hundred discordant peoples; to maintain each of them in its own privileges within its legitimate range of action; to allow them severally the indulgence of national feelings, and the stimulus of rival interests; and yet withal to blend them into one great social establishment, and to pledge them to the perpetuity of the one imperial power;–this is an achievement which carries with it the unequivocal token of genius in the race which effects it.

Tu regere populos Romane, memento [remember that you rule the people with Roman authority]

This was the special boast, as the poet considered it, of the Roman; a boast as high in its own line as that other boast, proper to the Greek nation, of literary preeminence, of exuberance of thought and of skill and refinement in expressing it (Cardinal John Henry Newman, “Christianity and Scientific Investigation,” in The Idea of a University, “University Subjects,” Discourse VIII.2).

Never mind that all this vaulting ambition required wars in which countless thousands of people (including, notably, the Jews) were crucified, besieged, or starved to death, or in which whole cities were laid to waste and whole peoples annihilated. What matters is the glory of empire, which Newman invokes here as a model for the ideal university. 

This is the tradition to which the Times is heir, the long preface it wants its readers to ignore. Forget Iran, it seems to be telling us, which is imminent and fait accompli. Focus on Taiwan, which is years away. A responsible, serious person would furrow his brow over the prospect of war with China over Taiwan sometime in 2027 or 2028. Luckily, that war will be way over there in the Pacific, too far away to affect us over here in any adverse way. Not having it would deprive us of the latest cell phone update. So it sure looks like a good idea. Put it on the “to do” list: the bucket list of wars we need to have before the century is out.

That’s what you should be thinking about as the armada nears Iran, according to the Times and every other apologist for liberal imperialism. Not this war, but the next, and the one after that, and the one after that, an inexhaustible pledge “to the perpetuity of the one imperial power.” This is how you manufacture consent for empire and the atrocities it requires. Get used to it, because it never fucking ends–until we do.