None of us should be giggling while the world burns, with widespread death and destruction in the Middle East and fears that blow traded could escalate to apocalyptic proportions
It has been so easy to dismiss Donald Trump with his delusional rhetoric as Comical Doolally. But with widespread death and destruction in the Middle East ongoing and fears that the blows being traded could escalate to apocalyptic proportions, this is no laughing matter.
Even less so, last week’s social media montage of Hollywood film figures declaring justice had been done “the American Way”, as more bombs rained down on Iran, killing men, women and terrified children. Hollywood superstar Ben Stiller, whose movie Tropic Thunder was among those featured in the montage, demanded the video be removed. “Hey White House,” he posted on X. “We never gave you permission and have no interest in being part of your propaganda machine. War is not a movie.”
As reprehensible, testosterone-fuelled displays of childishness go, the montage was right up there, reviling the rest of the world. It followed the burials of some 160 girls, bombed at school in Iran, and the deaths of six American servicemen. It followed the juvenile, gung-ho, trigger happy jingoism of Peter Hegseth, head of the White House Department of War.
“They are toast and they know it,” He said of the Iranian regime last week. “This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down.”
You can picture him, beer in one hand, the other running through his slicked back hair, boasting of US troops laying waste to their Iranian counterparts. Because if you seriously think Trump gives a flying duck about the Iranian people, I’ve a bridge I’d like to sell you.
If you believe the figure being bandied about that the Iranians slaughtered 30,000 of their own people during a recent crackdown, then you really are the Trump administration’s target audience. Why were the Americans not fuelling planes at 10,000 deaths?
And how do they square the bloodthirsty framing of the Iranians with their own treatment of their US citizens, with ICE agents dragging them from cars and shooting them in the streets? It is a well-used tactic: dehumanise your opponents, suggesting they are animals that can’t be controlled or reasoned with, to justify aggression.
Sir Keir Starmer has taken justified heavy fire over the past couple of years, not least in this column, for betraying the very socialists who voted for him. But he deserves praise for refusing to dip his hands into the blood spilled across Iran and the disgraceful celebrations around it.
The former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, General Sir Richard Shirreff, gave a telling interview this week on Sky News. He didn’t just dismiss the idea that the so-called Special Relationship – a term coined by Winston Churchill as far back as 1944 – is under threat.
Shirreff also shredded the media panic being used in an attempt to browbeat Starmer into chaining himself to Trump and jumping off a cliff. Understandably so. Europe’s leaders spent the first year of Trump second term climbing into his nether regions with a torch.
Yet Trump was threatening a 25% tariff on the likes of the UK, among several other European nations, just two months ago – unless the US was allowed to purchase Greenland. What special relationship?
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, has since told Trump where to go over Iran, rejecting the strikes as “reckless and illegal”. And Starmer is said to have had his Hugh Grant moment, per Love Actually, refusing to join the strikes, maintaining talks were the best way forward. Rightly so. War is not, and never has been, a game.