As the United States continues to lose the war to Iran, expect American journalists to employ increasingly bizarre but instructive circumlocutions to misdescribe obvious but unpalatable realities. This piece in The Wall Street Journal is a classic in the genre. “Iran uses asymmetric warfare to inflict pain from a weakened position.” Translation: “Iran is using asymmetric warfare to win the war.”

This is how the article starts out:

Iran’s downing of two U.S. warplanes is the most striking evidence yet that, despite enormous military losses, Tehran can still significantly raise the cost of continuing the conflict for the U.S. and Israel.

The shootdowns were the most successful demonstration of Iran’s military strategy to inflict tactical defeats on the U.S. and its allies in hopes not of winning militarily, but of surviving and sapping their will to continue the fight.

What’s the difference between winning a war “militarily” and “sapping your enemy’s will to fight”? There is in fact no difference–unless you’re looking desperately to salvage a conception of “fighting” that’s irrelevant to winning, so that. you can insist that that activity is your forte. Maybe it is, but then your forte is losing.

Next passage:

The F-15E jet fighter and A-10 attack plane were the first U.S. or Israeli aircraft to be shot down in thousands of sorties flown in Iranian airspace. A massive search and rescue effort extricated one crew member but at least one additional crew member was unaccounted for.

This is a desperate attempt to pretend that since the lost planes were a small fraction of the total number employed, their loss is no big deal. But then why not say that the loss of the missing pilot is no big deal, and express indifference as to what happens to him? Yet everywhere one goes, one is expected to affect concern for our heroic pilot, and treat the dubious Hollywood-esque story of his rescue as a triumph.

In any case, we’re told nothing about the relative strategic importance of the “thousands of sorties flown in Iranian airspace.” So it’s impossible to know whether the loss of these jets is significant or not. We were also told by our dear leaders that our jets were the most advanced in the world, essentially invincible, and that all Iranian air defenses had been obliterated (or perhaps “decimated,” there being no difference between 100% and 10% destruction in the Trumpian universe). Isn’t it significant that the Iranians have rebutted these confident claims, and threaten to keep doing so? Not to Americans convinced that their claims are irrefutable by virtue of being American.

This is one of my favorites, an “expert” claim dying for confrontation with a Socratic questioner:

“It definitely shows that Iran can win without winning,” said Alan Eyre, a former State Department expert on Iran and fellow with the Middle East Institute. “The U.S. narrative is, ‘We’ve got everything in the bag.’ This punctures that narrative.”

“Win without winning.” Tell me you’re not making any sense without telling me you’re not making any sense.

I almost feel bad laughing at this one, but this really is funny:

Instead of seeking to fight the U.S. and Israel toe to toe, Iran has adopted an asymmetric strategy, targeting Arab Gulf states, knocking out radars and other facilities critical to air defenses and shutting down most tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. It is a tactic that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, often called the IRGC, the powerful Iranian military organization running the war effort, also used to kill thousands of American troops in Iraq by arming proxy militias with improvised-explosive devices.

Even if we put aside the arguable justifiability of killing thousands of American troops in Iraq–it was, after all, the United States that invaded Iraq–the last sentence is a total fabrication. The strongest version of the U.S. government’s own public claim is that 608 US service members were killed in Iraq by Iran-backed militias, whether supplied or enabled by the IRGC. As a business analyst in the reporting division of a major revenue management firm, I’m used to creative ways of rounding figures up or down to tell a palatable tale. But there’s no way to round 608 up to “thousands” without lying your ass off.

Like all U.S. government claims, the 608 figure invites skepticism all by itself: the figure comes from the Trump Administration’s attempt to justify its 2020 assassination of Qasim Suleimani, one of Iran’s then top generals. As hardly needs emphasis, the Trump Administration lies about everything, particularly its military activities, so there’s no reason to think that this figure would be immune from the general trend. If you start pushing on it, you see that much of it turns on guesswork and speculation about the conjectured Iranian origin of various weapons used to kill American soldiers. Even if we treat the reporting from the field as accurate, the inferences backwards from Iraq to the Iranians are very far from verified fact.

But however all of the evidential garbage here is spun, there is no evidence that the IRGC “ran” the Iraqi war effort, much less that it killed “thousands” of American troops. These claims are charitably described as inaccurate, but best described as propagandistic lies designed to convince Americans that there is some attenuated, semi-plausible reason for continuing the war against Iran. The Journal needs something to spin this war, and this the best they’ve got: Twenty years ago, a couple of hundred soldiers of the invading US army were killed by militias of the country they were invading. These militias borrowed the weapons and expertise of their neighbors–and that’s why, twenty years later, out of the blue, we have to invade the neighbors.

We can all look forward to lots more lies of this sort embedded within the subordinate clauses of lots more convoluted sentences in lots more apologetic “news articles.” That’s how lies find their way into the collective consciousness, how people come to believe that our wars have at least the tincture of a justification, and why people resign themselves to accepting the latest war based on the latest set of lies, decade after decade after decade.  (For a book-length discussion of the lies told by American Presidents, I highly recommend Eric Alterman’s When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences, a book that will instill a permanent habit of skepticism about almost anything these assholes say.)

In any case, what would it be for Iran to “fight the U.S. and Israel toe to toe”? Wars aren’t boxing matches, whether literally or even metaphorically. The suggestion seems to be that wars are fought by the defending side’s employing exactly the same tactics as the aggressors, regardless of the strategic advantages or disadvantages of doing so, and fighting them “toe to toe,” regardless of any considerations of comparative advantage. The authors write as though “toe to toe” fighting were somehow the norm in warfare, but exceptions leap more readily to mind than examples. Try the American revolutionaries against the British, or the Haitians against the French, or the Algerians against the French, or the Vietnamese at Dien Bien Phu, or the Vietnamese against the United States. Or you could try the Afghans against the Qajars, the Sikhs, the British, the Soviets, or the US and NATO.

The paradigm instance of fighting “toe to toe”–of each party’s main combat formations waging direct, open, sustained warfare using similar tactics–is probably trench warfare in World War I. But the example by itself suggests why no one would want to replicate it. And come the next war, few did. The Blitz was an asymmetric contest. So was Operation Barbarossa. And the great triumph of American entry was supposed to be the asymmetric power of the U.S. economy over the Axis. So it’s hard to see where the supposed norm comes from.

This memorial is dedicated to the anti-monarchist war we fought 250 years ago so that we could fight one in support of six monarchies today (Metuchen, New Jersey)

It’s as though someone complained that a neighborhood ice cream parlor, in inventing some exotic flavor of ice cream, was not “fighting Häagen-Dazs toe to toe” because Häagen-Dazs didn’t have that particular flavor of ice cream in its inventory. No business fights its rivals “toe to toe.” If businesses don’t, why would militaries? This is what happens when people spend their lives conceiving of war as a game: the rules of some hazily-envisioned game become the norms of warfare. Except that none of that is true or makes sense. How hard would it be to admit that like any combatant in any war, Iran is relying on its comparative military advantages with obvious and demonstrable success?

This seems right except for one notable omission:

The air campaign has pounded Iranian missile bases and mobile launchers, but Tehran has been able to continue to fire dozens of missiles and drones a day, prolonging the conflict, raising the economic costs on oil-exporting Gulf countries and in the U.S., and surviving to fight another day.

Aren’t they also surviving to fight today?

I won’t bore you with the rest. It’s too dumb to belabor, and I’m sure you get the point. But I can’t forbear from quoting this last passage, giving the last word to the Iranians themselves.

Even with the U.S. rescue effort still under way and the fate of the American crew member still uncertain, Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, posted a mocking statement on social media, suggesting U.S. war aims had suffered a major blow.

“This brilliant no-strategy war they started has now been downgraded from “regime change” to “Hey! Can anyone find our pilots?” he wrote. “Wow. What incredible progress. Absolute geniuses.”

It’s not just that he’s right, but that so many Americans agree with him. This has got to be the first war in American history in which sympathy with the “enemy” has been normalized a month into the war. “Weird to cheer for your own side to be hit,” someone confided in me, “but I am.” I’d put it differently. There’s only one side to be on, which is the side of justice. We’re not tribal serfs forced to be loyal to either tribe or set of them. We’re free agents. I don’t pledge allegiance to the Iranian flag any more than I do the American one. It’s just that the Iranians happen to be right here. You don’t have to pledge allegiance to their regime to hope that they win the war. You just have to want the aggressors to be put in their place.

So yes, I’m rooting for the Iranians. I’ve lost my patience with American bravado, bullshit artistry, bloodlust, and lies. The United States should surrender to the Iranians, accept their terms, and make a resolution never to repeat this aggression again.  Its soldiers, sailors, pilots, etc. should simply absent themselves from the war–declare conscientious objector status, go AWOL, or whatever it takes not to show up. And the people cheerleading for or actively facilitating or running this war should be reviled, ostracized, and canceled without apology. As for the war itself, everything should be done to criticize, protest, sabotage, and subvert it.

That’s not going to happen, I know, but that doesn’t dissuade me from saying it out loud, and urging it on everyone within hearing. If this be treason, make the most of it. Better yet, join in.