Where Are Our Leaders?

thoughts on last night's missile attack

Photo by ashutosh nandeshwar on Unsplash

An update, as of October 10: this post has apparently ended up in a corner of Substack that is populated by people who prefer ad hominem attacks to respectful disagreement, so I’m turning comments off for all but paid subscribers. If you came here for the sole purpose of calling me uneducated, a radical Islamist, or a defender of terrorists—all of which are inaccurate—I kindly suggest that you get off the internet and touch some grass!

Friends: this newsletter is impromptu. I couldn’t sleep without drafting it. Last night, Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel, lighting up Jordan’s night sky on their way. Maybe I’m flattering myself here, but I imagine you might be wondering how I am. If not, I’m going to tell you anyway. 

Had I been home in Amman, I would’ve watched the attack unfold from my garden, a kind of twisted doomsday light show. But I am writing to you from a hotel room somewhere in Bulgaria, where Nick and I were curled up safe and sound under the covers during the bombardment, watching reruns of 30 Rock while we clicked through email alerts from the State Department and acknowledged orders to shelter in place. Israel is vowing reprisal, the American and Jordanian militaries are on high alert, and much of the Middle East’s airspace is closed. What’s coming next—and how far it will spiral—is anyone’s guess. My sweet puppy, Boo, is back in Amman; I couldn’t get on a plane and make it to her even if I tried, and all I want to do is squeeze her and kiss her soft puppy ears and tell her it will be okay.

This is exactly what I’d feared when I wrote this piece a couple months ago, and I’ve grown tired of dancing around the point, which is that this war is reckless and avoidable and I am fucking sick of it. 

I am relieved that more people in Israel weren’t hurt in this aerial assault (early reporting says Iran’s attack resulted in only one fatality, a Gazan sheltering in the West Bank—the tragic irony is almost too much to bear). I wish I could say the same for people in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, who have been bombarded for weeks and months, and whose unimaginable suffering this distracts from. Iran’s attack last night was violent, reckless, and escalatory and we should condemn it as such, but let’s not forget that it was NOT random. It was a delayed response to Israel’s assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in Iran and Lebanon—one of whom, Ismail Haniyeh, had been in the middle of Gaza ceasefire negotiations—which were also violent, reckless, and escalatory.

I am tired of seeing my own country underwrite these escalations, which benefit no one except perhaps Bibi himself as he attempts to cling to power, and have cost countless Palestinians and Lebanese civilians their lives. It’s worth noting, I think, that the U.S. is no longer calling for calm, but is instead calling for blood in response to Iran’s attack¹—and all this time, has failed to call for justice for the innocent people slain in Palestine and Lebanon.

As Israel is supposedly a close ally of the U.S. and our largest aid recipient, the U.S. has the ability to exert pressure on Israel to stop the massacre in Gaza and avoid escalation into a wider regional war. Instead, the U.S. has taken on the role of junior partner, accepting Israel’s arguments uncritically, making weak public statements that refuse to condemn human rights violations, and shielding Israel from any consequences of those human rights violations. Now I fear it might be too late. It seems there are no true leaders in the room with us, and that makes me angry.

Many of you have been angry for months now; perhaps you think I’m just waking up and getting with the program. But I spent my professional life studying wars and trying to understand the absolute worst inclinations of human nature—the ones that make us resort to these unspeakable acts of violence—so hardly anything shocks me anymore. Yet right now, I am physically ill, because this war was entirely avoidable. I want you to know that. Almost all wars are avoidable to an extent, but this one will go down in the history books as especially worthless, senseless, stupid, and cruel. The Israeli government had the right to respond proportionally to Hamas following the October 7 attacks, but they did not have the right to massacre civilians—which is never, ever justified—or to provoke a regional war by conducting raids, bombings, and assassinations in third countries. 

And now Israel will respond to last night’s attack, risking even further escalation. I hope the immediate tension between Iran and Israel fizzles, much like it did after Iran’s bombardment of Israel in April. But even in that best of scenarios, Israel will still be carrying out a massacre in Gaza and killing civilians in airstrikes in Lebanon, and the U.S.—the supposed superpower, the “adult in the room”—will be doing virtually nothing to stop it. 

Imagine a world where the U.S. had been willing to exert real pressure on the Israeli government to get a ceasefire. Then imagine a world where IDF doctrine did not explicitly include the use of disproportionate force; a world where Secretary Blinken hadn’t rejected reports of Israel blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza (recognition of which would have meant a mandatory embargo on weapons shipments to Israel); a world where the stated foreign policy goals of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas did not include Israel’s total destruction; a world where Palestinians were not relegated to open-air prisons, but could instead live their lives in peace and dignity; a world where Israeli leader Yitzak Rabin hadn’t been assassinated by one of his own for advocating a two-state solution; a world where innocent children weren’t being blown to smithereens.

What a world that would be! I don’t know about you, but that’s the world I’d prefer to live in. And while we can’t rewrite history, we can decide to chart a different path. Change is still possible.

I have much more to say on this, and on what that sort of change will require. Expect it in the coming days, once I’ve had a chance to absorb last night’s events, get my head on straight, and articulate my thoughts in a way that better serves and empowers you. I’m just not feeling capable of that right now.

My mom texted me a couple hours ago, telling me how glad she was that I wasn’t in Jordan and how she wished I was never going back. But you know what? I would rather have been in Amman last night, listening to the wail of the air raid sirens and watching the missiles streak through the sky. I’d rather be there to bear witness to this dark chapter of history, so that years from now, if and when the U.S. tries to pretend we weren’t accountable, I could say that I was there, that I saw our shame with my own two eyes. That they may want to forget, but I remember.

More to come,
Sam

1. From Reuters: “‘This is a significant escalation by Iran, a significant event,’ [U.S. National Security Advisor Jake] Sullivan told reporters at the White House. ‘We have made clear that there will be consequences, severe consequences, for this attack, and we will work with Israel to make that the case.’ Sullivan did not specify what those consequences might be, but he stopped short of urging restraint by Israel as the U.S. did in April when Iran carried out a drone and missile attack on Israel.”