A Hurricane of Horseshit

What a strange bubbling stew we live in; a welter of mysterious lumps and undisolved clots of unpleasant spice. I’ve been watching a Canadian Broadcasting program about Germany’s Taurus cruise missile—the first ever cruise missile named after a disappointing American car—which may finally be headed to Ukraine. The endless wavering of Trump between sullen support and outright hostility to Ukraine has in recent months cranked up the pressure on Germany to provide greater support, including the much-lauded weapon, which is considerably more powerful than the Storm Shadow missiles provided by the U.K. and ATACMS provided by the U.S. —pressure I’m sure the German chancellor Friedrich Merz values, given the more hawkish position he occupies compared to his predecessor. The matter has come to a head recently; a recording of a meeting between senior German military leaders discussing using Taurus missiles to destroy the Kerch Bridge—one of two routes between mainland Russia and the Crimean Peninsula—came to light, courtesy of Russian spies.

Russia claims that Germany is heading down a path it traveled twice in the last century—you may offer up guesses as to what they’re referring to. Of course, it’s ridiculous but at the same time I’ve heard the recording and I get that it’s a juicy tidbit for Russia to be selling. But military people make plans; it’s just what they do. The existence of an American military plan to invade Canada is not damning. Rather, it shows a military that’s doing its job: being prepared for whatever might come. It’s a surprisingly humble position, as it demonstrates that the people in the planning business are fully aware that they cannot predict the future.

None-the-less, when you hear such plans being casually discussed, they sound pretty awful, and I find myself reminded of the fundamentally apolitical stance that all good militaries seek to cultivate and how such stances are in fact not a panacea—they can perversely blind military leaders to important moral truths; like any highly technical matter, deep immersing oneself in the very complex realities of military operations can wind up leaving little room for moral and ethical philosophizing, and nowhere should this fact carry more weight than in the offices of the German military. The almost willfully apolitical stance of the Wehrmacht in its prosecution of the Second World War doesn't require any elucidation from me, but just because they failed back then does not mean that they should be permanently paralyzed. Germany is still a nation and still needs to defend itself and its interests.

It may simply be that the ability of armies to arrest the political decline of a nation is a phantom; that armies are constitutionally susceptible to moral blindness and thus not a suitable remedy for moral illness. Not that Russia gives two Russian shits whether the German army is operating conscientiously or not—the Kremlin is just trying to score cheap political points. That said, it’s a funny time for an American to hear such critiques: Germany has been circumspect almost to a fault, while here in the U.S. a brigade of Marines hops off to do battle with its own citizens in California, and not one Marine officer had anything to say about it.

But again, it’s ridiculous to look to the military as your source of moral righteousness. The military is a national tool, and in the hands of an immoral leader an army can do great harm. In the hands of a moral leader an army can prevent or truncate a harmful occurrence, but expecting the army to lead the way toward reform is absurd, like expecting your dog to make dinner.

Speaking of dogs (and the cars they happen to catch), we are finally at war with Iran. I’ve been waiting for this since 1979, when the events depicted in Argo actually happened and I got into it with my friends Donovan and Winter and somehow or other Donovan wound up getting whacked across the head with a rubber hose. I like to think this was the very first instance of violence in response to the Islamic Revolution, but it was a squib compared to what I’ve always expected, and anyway the hose assault was probably a result of horseplay rather than sincere expressions of political dispute amongst a group of nine-year olds.

Anyway, now we’ve got a real hamburger to chew on.

I don’t wish to debate the wisdom of the attack on the Fordow nuclear facility writ small—I’ve read a variety of opinions on the matter and the truth is it’s too complicated for my little brain. But the context in which it happened is simply execrable, and we’ll be damn lucky to escape unscathed.

Point the first: All of this is being run by a group of former TV show hosts and those weirdly formed miscreants who have demonstrated enough servile toe-licking to be allowed into Trump’s inner circle. I guess there’s some accidental proportionality in this: Iran is run by clowns too.

Point the second: the weapons used in this strike are the largest non-nuclear bombs in the U.S. arsenal. From a strictly technical point of view the Massive Ordnance Penetrator is a staggering device which can penetrate hundreds of feet through rock and concrete, before exploding. We dropped a dozen of them on Fordow, and in the immediate aftermath, with the most limited of information, our frighteningly amateurish president declared victory.

The Donald conferring with Pete Hegseth, his Secretary of Drunken Fighting

A couple days later it doesn’t look so clear. Trump administration officials admit they don’t know where Iran’s enriched uranium is, which is both terrifying and clearly indicative of the grotesque complacency of The Donald and his raft of monkeys. A couple dozen cargo trucks were spotted at the facility a few days ago, so I think we can be reasonably certain the bomb fuel was shipped out along with a lot of equipment long before the B-2s arrived. Moreover, it’s not at all clear how much damage was done to the installation itself. The key piece of information here concerns centrifuges. These are more or less like the centrifuges you see in hospitals for separating plasma from blood, except that these spin faster than the speed of sound and have to be mounted permanently in concrete in order to provide the stable platform needed to keep the machines from tearing themselves apart like a 19th century flying machine.

So the centrifuges could not be moved; could they have been destroyed? Maybe. Maybe not. If they turn out to be still functional, that means we just dropped our pants on the world stage. There is an ongoing debate about how much penetration the Massive Ordnance Penetrator can penetrate, and this is by far and away the worst way to find out the truth. Having gone this far, we can now no longer afford to leave the job unfinished—if the bombs didn’t do the job, we can’t very well just throw up our hands and say, “Oh well. We tried.” If Iran wasn’t on a path to build a bomb before the bombing, who can doubt that they won’t be frantically chasing that goal now? It’s the only option they have left to prevent this happening again.

And of course absolutely none of this would have been necessary were it not for the world-historic foolishness of Donald Trump. You may recall that we once had an agreement with Iran under which they would not attempt to build a nuclear weapon. Trump tore it up immediately at the beginning of his first term, claiming it was a terrible deal… just the worst deal in the history of deals etc. etc. ad nauseam. I’ve always been told not to criticize until you can offer an alternative, but The Donald apparently doesn’t feel that way, and hey, let’s give credit where credit is due: he did write The Art of the Deal.¹ So we should have gotten a better deal, right? One where Iran agrees to become the 51st state or whatever. Except, no, there was never any deal forthcoming, of any description.

That shortcoming has been in the news a bit lately, but instead of blessing us his brilliant negotiation acumen, Trump merely used the hope of a deal to cloud the water while he got ready to attack Iran without cause or warning.

Let me be clear: the Iranian government is a cancer, and I long for the day when it is gone. But launching unprovoked sneak attacks on other countries is illegal in a dozen different ways. It violates at least three of the criteria for a just war:

Just authority. The Trump administration operates unjustly, deporting and detaining people without due process, deploying the military against American citizens, and profiting personally off the exercise of its power. It lacks the moral authority to launch a war—even against an immoral enemy²—and as long as we’re on the subject, it lacks constitutional authority as well. The action is about as impeachable as it gets, though of course Trump won’t see any consequences from Congress’ direction.

Just cause. Iran has done nothing to the U.S. Yes, there is an ongoing tit for tat between Israel and Iranian-backed militias which occasionally spills over into conflict with U.S. forces, but this is not a real threat to the U.S. and hasn’t happened recently anyway. There is no proximate cause here—Trump’s own admittedly toadyish and self-serving NSA director made clear that there was no danger of Iran completing a nuke anytime soon. Indeed, Iran never quite relinquished the hope of their agreement with the Obama administration, dialing back their work on a bomb, resulting an “immanent threat” which somehow has been immanent for a decade. This was entirely an opportunistic strike, and history doesn’t look kindly on nations that spring attacks on others.

Last resort. I mean, come on. Do I even need to explain this?

So there you have it folks. We Pearl Harbored Iran. Tojo Trump thinks it’s all over and now he wants his Nobel Peace Prize. I rather doubt that it’s over, though, who knows? I think Iran would probably love to reduce the heat, but Bibi seems determined to turn this into something apocalyptic, and we’re in the sidecar whether we like it or not. It’s anybody’s guess how much worse things might get but if they ended here it would be a miracle, and not a miracle like growing back an ear.

Enough of the war talk. Before I call it quits I have a semi-random assemblage of quick news items:

Some interesting work coming out of MIT regarding the ongoing scourge of so-called AI: Nobel Prize winner Daron Acemoglu has produced a paper in which he predicts that the much ballyhooed AI revolution will ultimately amount to only about 5% of business tasks being automated and 1% added to global GDP—a rather unimpressive showing for a technology that Silicon Valley is flogging like they think they invented fire. He has reasons—it’s not just grousing. Read all about it.

If you’re one of the people who now depend on ChatGPT to figure out what goes on a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich or how to pee without getting your pant leg wet, I’ve got great news for you, also from MIT. Extensive use of ChatGPT correlates with cognitive decline. I can’t find it now but I flagged an article the other day which explored the skill loss being experienced by developers who rely on “vibe coding.” If you don’t know, this is coding done entirely via chatbot prompt. Unfortunately aside from being completely antithetical to every reason I can think of for wanting to be a developer in the first place, it’s also a great way to lose your knowledge of language syntax and, more importantly, problem-solving skills. Fuck that. I often hear people insisting that they only use chatbots for brainstorming and outlining and would never, ever simply sit back and let the computer do their jobs for them, but a) brainstorming should involve your brain, and b) chatbots play to human laziness. From the MIT article:

The study found that the ChatGPT group initially used the large language model (LLM) to ask structural questions for their essay, but near the end of the study, they were more likely to copy and paste their essay entirely.

Duh.

I suppose there’s no stopping this tidal wave of bullshit but at the risk of being repetitive, I refuse to play. I value my cognition more than I value the ability to get things done slightly faster and with more errors, so if you’re thinking about hiring me in hopes I’ll play along, don’t. And if you’re thinking of firing me because I won’t engage in stupid parlor games, well, you do you.

And finally one last note. I’ve threatened to write a book in these so-called pages probably more than once, but I’ve had struggles with daily writing that have tended to neuter these efforts before I can get started. I’m really good at creating habits about 20 percent of the time, which I guess means I’m not that great at creating habits. But every now and then things seem to come together, and I can usually get a sense when I’ve created a habit I think I can sustain. I did have a daily writing habit around the time I left Boston some 20 years ago, but it didn’t survive the move, and since then most of my writing is done in desperate four hour marathons, which is not ideal. With a lot of reflection and a lot of work I think I’ve gotten myself to a better place: I’m writing 400-500 words a day with pretty good regularity, and I’m inclined to think it’ll stick. I believe it will stick better than last time honestly, if only because I’ve become more systematic and process-driven than I was when I was younger.

I’ll refrain from discussing the subject matter at the moment, though I will brag that I have finished and redrafted one chapter. I may serialize it here, I don’t know yet. I feel like I need to get four or five chapters behind me before I give it serious thought, but I will keep you appraised of my progress in any event.

1. He did not write The Art of the Deal.

2. On the hoary principle that two wrongs don’t make a right.