Excellent? Or Terrific?

...and Thoughts on Iran/Israel and Our National Unseriousness

At a work convention earlier in the week, I stepped away from the main locus of action to take a walk through the manufactured retail village to a coffeeshop, as the main outlets for the elixir of life featured great lines of the addicted. Along the way, I happened across the path of a friend/mentor of mine who was headed in the other direction. To begin the human ritual of greeting, I opened with:

“Hey, how are you doing?”

In answer he said one word. “Terrific”. And that stopped me in my tracks.

Why, you may ask?

Well, first, because it felt like he really meant it. His easy-going manner and bright smile seemed to back up the statement.

Secondly, because my “standard answer” to the question— “Excellent”, in a moment seemed forever inadequate.

Let’s face it. Nine times out of ten, when we ask a fellow human “how are you?”, we really aren’t asking how they are. Or at least that’s the way it is with me. It really comes down to a generalized elongation of the greeting “hey” or “hi”. A more honest question (from me, at least) would be “what’s going on?”, or “what have you been up to?” This is because (again, for me), to the extent that I am interested in human interaction at all with nine out of ten humans, it is NOT about their feelings/life situation/struggles and worries. It isn’t that I don’t care (although sometimes it is), but more to the point, that I am not entitled, that such a level of intimacy with their feelings and situation is inappropriate to the superficial circumstances of our relationship.

I make this point because when I find myself on the other end of this question, when someone I am an acquaintance with or even with someone on the next electron ring toward the nucleus, asks me how I am, the only appropriate response I’ve come to settle on is “Excellent”. It doesn’t matter how I really feel at the moment, whether I am in a dismal mood at UVA’s basketball team’s incompetence, my retirement portfolio’s performance, or the mutterings of some asshat, wannabe NatSec Bro, or if I am on a momentary high. My actual state is in most cases, not their business, but even if I felt that they were mildly interested in my well-being, the circumstances of the interaction dictate that depth be avoided in favor of banal superficiality. If they want to go deep—or if I want to go deep—this chance meeting along a busy walkway is not the place for it.

That is why my friend’s answer—-”Terrific!”—-made such an impression on me. For some reason, it seems so much better, so comprehensive. Excellent seems almost cold, off-putting, in comparison. As I walked away from this interaction, I harkened back to E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web and my memory of one of Charlotte’s early web descriptions of Wilbur that gained so much attention. “Terrific” is what it said.

Should we pass in an airport or at a convention and you ask how I am, I hope to answer in the future with a cheery “Terrific!”.

Israel and Iran

Iran attacked Israel over the weekend with hundreds of missiles, which the competent, well trained Israeli (with American and British help) forces largely intercepted (where threatening) or ignored (where less so). This attack—mounted in no small measure from Iranian sovereign territory—represented for some, a significant escalation in Middle East tensions. Iran was reported to have made the attack in retribution for an Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus that killed a number of Iranian military officials in early April. Israel presumably mounted that attack in response to Iranian sponsorship and support of the Hamas attack on Israel in October that killed 1200. And so it goes.

I am not among those who attach great importance to the significance of Iran attacking Israel from its own territory. The clucking and teeth-sucking of those who do strikes me as odd, given the global nature of Iran’s terrorist activities and perfidy. I suppose it makes a difference to SOME that it is the Houthi’s shooting at shipping in the Red Sea, but they are doing it with Iranian missiles leveraging Iranian targeting and supported by Iranian military technicians. In other words, Iran is attacking those ships. So if Iran had been able to launch this missile fusillade at Israel entirely from Syria and Lebanon, would that have made it somehow less of an attack, less of aggression? I think not.

Another common reaction among the wise and wonderful has been to look at Israel’s performance and the general lack of success and damage from the attacks, and draw the conclusion that somehow, Iran’s response was “restrained”, as if Iran were capable of doing so much more, and that this piddling attack was really just the move of a pawn on the strategic chessboard designed for Iranian domestic audiences and somehow not worthy of a counter from Israel. I am reading reports this morning of our aged President advising Israeli leadership not to respond, that somehow, the score it tied and that if Israel just sits on its hands, wider Middle Eastern war will once again be averted.

I don’t buy this. There is no predetermined outcome in matters such as this. There are only the facts on the ground. And the relevant facts for me are that Hamas violated and existing cease-fire agreement with Israel to conduct its October attack with full Iranian support, that Israel has responded with justifiable force to included attacking Iranian targets in Syria and that yes—Iran had a right to attack Israel in response, from its own territory or from the territory of whatever lacky it chooses. As in all cases, fool around and find out.

Other facts include our close and historic friendship with Israel and decades of tension and aggression with Iran. We have a dog in this fight, we are on a team, and we should never forget who our teammate is. And who it isn’t.

More importantly though, we—you, me, and the dude with his headphones on in the Metro—need to get it through our skulls that things are breaking down, that the global order that America established and underpinned for decades is fraying in demonstrable ways, in no small measure because we are choosing to decline in exchange for a false sense of anesthetized security. The fall of the Soviet Union removed our great organizing principle, and we have been strategically adrift ever since, believing at first that there were no more monsters and now, that others should fight the new monsters, while we eliminate student debt, require lavish childcare facilities at government supported microchip manufacturing plants and conjure up new, ungendered names for pre-existing made up groups of people. We are not a serious nation.

A serious nation would recognize that war is on the horizon, and it would prepare for it. War is always on the horizon, by the way, that’s how we do it as human beings. But war involving US forces grows increasingly likely, and our unserious response is to limit ourselves to 1% growth in defense spending in 2025. A serious nation would also ensure the strength of its team of allies, and would support them materially and spiritually when they are the subject of dastardly attacks. A serious nation would recognize that China is not our friend, that China acts wherever and whenever it can to limit our influence and strength, that China is keeping Russia armed even as we walk away from supporting Ukraine’s superb knee-capping of Russia (our #2 strategic adversary and the main supporter of Iran on the international scene).

A serious nation would strengthen its borders, as deciding who comes and who stays is the table stakes of national sovereignty, would support its friends and those who are injuring our enemies, and would reinvigorate its stagnant and under-resourced defense industrial base broadly and immediately. Pretty much everything else comes after these three strategic objectives. Instead, we will pander to the most extreme on the right and the left, we will tell parents across the country that boys should be allowed to use girls bathrooms in schools, and we will sacrifice brave nations contributing to our national security in the service of isolationism and stoking the ego of felonious ex-President and would be felonious future President.

We are not serious. And winter is coming.