There is no such thing as international law
Into Darkness
“Klingons”
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has the best Klingons. Now friendly with the Federation, Klingons and Andorrans and even, eventually, the Romulans make common cause with the Federation to fight a war with the Dominion. It is a powerful entity from another quadrant, led by a suspicious and mercurial race called the Changelings. Convinced that the “solids” bear them nothing but ill will, the Changelings will do anything they can to subdue, and maybe destroy all the races of the Alpha quadrant. Of course, war breaks out. But the Klingons, (now deep into cannon and with some robust character development) are the proud, noble, strictly hierarchical barbarian race who are most able to fight off the Changeling’s drugged and technical Jem ‘Hadar shock troops. The Klingons act when the Federation hesitates and dispatch with great ruthlessness any compunction that might stand in the way of winning. In a conversation with Captain Sisko, where the captain complains that the sneak attack they are planning is “not very honorable, Worf explains:
“In battle, there is no greater honor than victory.”
By season 5, DS9 becomes a deep mediation on the nature of war, and how it ruins everything and everyone. Any claim for purity that the Federation in it’s first iterations, The Original Series, or The Next Generation, is deprecated. By the end of the show, every character ends up sullied; the high-minded principles they believed are now tempered in the fire of the reality. For everyone’s innocence, it’s a good day to die. DS9 redeems itself at the very end, but only because it cheats, a very obvious deux a machina allows the crew to move on without resorting to the genocide that would be required. But only barely, and there is a tacit acknowledgement that had things been allowed to continue, nothing would have ended well for anyone.
“There are rules, Garak, even in a war.”
It’s been about a week since Douglas Murray and Dave Smith debated America’s involvement, such as it is, in the war in Gaza. I’m not sure I would call it much of debate. Dave tried to talk past Murray every chance he got, and Murray seemed more interested in taking Joe Rogan to task about his guest choices. That seems ill-considered considering Murray was now a guest on the show for the express purpose of debating the point, but neither one scored any real points on the other and Murray gave the distinct impression he had thrown the match. It was supremely disappointing.
Perhaps part of the problem is that Murray is British. The British, like the Canadians, can’t really seem to grasp the concept that Americans simply will not stand for the tyranny of manners. The Commonwealth is so fond of using this to shut down the radicals, they don’t understand when it won’t work. But all Americans are radicals in this sense, and if they aren’t, they’ll find themselves labeled any number of nasty epithets in short order like “neocons” and “RINOs” and “fascists” and “racists” which all are now the monikers of those who won’t commit to one side or the other wholesale. Free speech in America is the bedrock on which all other rights rest and every American knows this, like the sky is blue and the sea is wet. Threaten that, and you threaten the very core of American existence. Now you know why Twitter was bought by Mr. Musk.
But I see the Brits all the time with this sense of propriety. Like Piers Morgan simply not understanding why Alex Jones was put back on X or Jordan Peterson suggesting the ridiculous nonsense that Kavanaugh should step down – there just had to be limits on what could and could not be said or endured because it’s just not right, not proper. Americans have no such compunctions. In fact, Americans are so hostile to this concept, there are even two clauses in the Constitution discouraging the conveyance of titles or honors that would mark a person of a certain class. No one person, or group, has dominion over the public square. That is the thing that is not proper in America; that is the thing that will not do.
If someone wants to come on the Joe Rogan podcast and talk about how Aliens built the pyramids, why not? Could it be any less true or valid then what’s said on the “The View?” Besides, this is entertainment. Intellectuals, experts, truth, that’s not as important or as INTERESTING as aliens - and what is interesting is watched. Or read, in case you don’t remember the “Weekly World News.” Nevertheless, Murray handicapped himself by spending a whole forty interminable minutes trying to tell Joe Rogan, of all people, to not be an American. Of course it didn’t work, especially since Murray was intending to have a sort of sloppy argument that relies on the grace of your opponents and a skilled moderator. That’s a problem when you are debating with comedians, which both Rogan and Smith are, because they are used to being heckled and thinking on their feet. There are no rules. Murray could not have picked a more dangerous pair of interlocutors if he tried and if you are going to debate that kind of practice, you better come with the heart of Klingon and loaded for bear.
“Did you know that the Romulan heart itself is grey? It's true. And altogether appropriate for such an unimaginative race.”
When I first moved to Canada, I thought that that America was like every other country. Sure, it was the best country, and certainly it wasn’t exactly the same as other countries, but it basically could occupy the same space as any other average nation. I thought that if America ceased to exist, say because some godlike alien snapped it into nothing, that world would not fundamentally change. Some things would be worse, but maybe some things would be better. The very existence of America was not germane to the proper functioning of the world. And perhaps there *was* a certain arrogance in the confidence of America’s essentialism. Did these other countries really need us? Were we truly spreading freedom across the world or simply acting in own interest and dressing it up as values, as principles and the American dream?
I was not sure of anything, and maybe if America receded from the world, the brown people halfway around the world would leave America alone. Honestly, what was so special about America that it could be referred to as “the indispensable nation?” I did not mind the idea of acting in our own interest. To me that’s how every country should act all the time. Perhaps *our* own interest was to butt out of the world, let it do its thing and just buy and sell the stuff we needed. They didn’t seem to want us around anyway after Vietnam. Why did we keep hanging about?
And then I got here. Where was the optimism? Where was the creativity? Where was the ambition? Where was the money? I was so used to New York and Silicon Valley, where big ideas were blown up to three times their size. But here, there was nothing. Not even a dream. Even the people all seemed to walk around with angry looks on their faces. I learned to engage them, and once doing that, they seemed to snap out of it, but it was unsettling and weird. Now I know they refer to it as the “Vancouver Chill” but not having had been anywhere else, it was all I knew of Canada. It took me a long time to get used to it.
It did, however, teach me something about the world: that the world I imagined outside the United States was very different than the world that actually existed outside the United States. It humbled me and now I am circumspect when someone tells me about a place I’ve never been, and especially if they’ve never been there either. They have their truth, I don’t think they are lying, but certainly it will be hard to know the accuracy of it. To live in a place is to know a place and without being there and feeling it and doing things like applying for a driver’s license or paying your taxes, you really don’t have a clue. These things - they matter. And they especially matter when your realize how quick and how many of your neighbors would be to take away your bank account if you said something they didn’t like.
“I tell you, Worf, war is much more fun when you are winning. Defeat makes my wounds ache.”
Not being able to read the room wasn’t Murray’s only mistake. He then went on to complain about the fact that none of the people talking about the conflict were “experts.” Again, the devil is in the details because he refers to people whose oeuvre he seems completely unfamiliar with. Without evidence for his claims, Dave moves him off his balance with counter claims he cannot check in real time. Perhaps he was hungover or maybe stoned but whatever possessed him to make an appeal to experts, he should probably never make that mistake again. Americans, at the best of times, are suspicious of “experts.” After years of pandemic hysteria, overstated claims, and genuine terror, Americans are sick to death of their “experts.” I don’t know how Murray missed it, but he clearly hasn’t realized that the electorate, regardless of political alignment, is ready to burn it all down to the ground.
Lastly, came what Murray though was a death blow, that Dave has never been to Israel and never to Gaza. Dave dismisses it with, “that’s not an argument.” It wasn’t, or at least not one that mattered. Americans do not need to visit Gaza to understand when money is taken from their paychecks that some of that money goes to pay for Gaza’s destruction. Why that may be a good or bad thing is irrelevant, you don’t need to go there to know it. Nor do you need to go to the front line to know that people are being killed, or that America’s national debt is worryingly large or that there are people hunched over on the streets of Philadelphia and San Francisco dying from dangerous drugs. You don’t need to walk through the burned kibbitzes to know that the founding fathers warned of international entanglements and everyone outside of America seems to hate it for Iraq. You don’t need to travel to know *any* of that. It is irrelevant.
For the rest of the conversation, Murray seemed to regroup and get better. Maybe the coffee finally hit, or maybe he realized the deep hole he had dug himself. Maybe it was nerves. I would be nervous too if I found myself in a hole on the most popular podcast in the world. Still, he limped along, occasionally bleeding all over the mat. For Dave it was a layup, for Douglas it was a disaster.
“I always hope for the best. Experience, unfortunately, has taught me to always expect the worst.”
Well, that was a painful three hours I’ll never get back. Douglas, surely, you can do better than this? Should I buy your book just to see what I’m missing? (I do have a lot of credits on Audacity.) You can make a better showing than that can’t you? Or do you need your tag team partner, Tabbibi, to come in off the ropes? I guess I’ll save my dressing down for Murray if I ever get a chance to meet him, which will probably be the day after never.
See, you have to explain this in a language Dave and his ilk understand, because appealing to their morals or their ignorance isn’t going to cut it. That’s because Dave is misled. Misled by people like you and now you have to come clean. Fine, if you can’t bring yourself to do it, I will do it. Okay, but first, as per our usual arrangement, the law. Which hopefully my readers appreciate because that’s what this thing is about. Let’s talk about international law.
Most people think that, like in the unreality of a reasonable galaxy, the earth has a guiding law. I’m sure a lot of my readers are familiar with the “Geneva convention,” the rules that govern the conduct of countries with regards to the wounded and civilians during wartime, but there are whole bunch of other rules as well. Here is a sample of some of the more famous ones:
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT, 1947) / World Trade Organization (WTO, 1995)
What it is: Trade rules (164 WTO members).
What it says: Cut tariffs, no unfair trade barriers, settle disputes fairly.
Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961)
What it is: Rules for how countries treat each other’s diplomats (179 parties).
What it says: Diplomats get immunity, their embassies are untouchable, no arresting them without consent of their home nation.
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT, 1968)
What it is: Arms control treaty (191 parties).
What it says: Nuclear states (U.S., Russia, etc.) won’t spread nukes; non-nuclear states won’t build them; all push disarmament eventually.
The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (1980)
What it is: A treaty signed by over 100 countries (as of 2025) to address when a parent takes a child across borders without the other parent’s consent, often during custody disputes.
What it says: If a child under 16 is wrongfully removed or kept from their "habitual residence" (where they normally live), the country they’re in must return them to that residence pronto, unless exceptions apply (e.g., grave risk of harm).
The USA is all-in on these agreements. They’ve been negotiated and signed by the president and Congress has ratified them. Which is as it should be according to the Constitution of the United States. A president can negotiate anything he wants, but to ratify a treaty requires the two-thirds successful vote of the Senate – a rare check on the presidential power when dealing with foreigners. This is important because treaties ratified by the USA become the law of the land, equivalent to federal laws and even the Constitution itself. Since there’s a lot riding on them, the United States is quite cautious when it comes to ratifying them, even if the President likes to sign them willy nilly. The President makes promises but it’s the people’s house that has to deliver. It doesn’t always. Here are some samples of international agreements that the United States does not participate in, or participate fully
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR, 1948)
What it is: Not a treaty but a UN cornerstone, inspiring binding laws.
What it says: Everyone’s got rights—life, liberty, no torture, free speech, education. No legal teeth directly, but it birthed treaties like the ICCPR (below).
Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951)
What it is: Protects refugees (145 parties).
What it says: No sending refugees back to danger (“non-refoulement”); they get rights to work, education.
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, 1966)
What it is: A binding UN treaty (ratified by 173 countries by 2025).
What it says: Protects rights like free expression, fair trials, no slavery, and the right to a nationality. States must report compliance.
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 1989)
What it is: Most ratified human rights treaty (196 countries, U.S. signed but not ratified).
What it says: Kids have rights to education, health, protection from abuse, and a say in their lives.
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC, 1998)
What it is: Sets up the ICC to prosecute war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity (123 parties, U.S. not in).
What it says: Individuals (not just states) can be tried for atrocities if national courts fail.
And of course:
Paris Agreement (2015)
What it is: Climate change treaty (195 parties).
What it says: Keep global warming below 2°C, ideally 1.5°C, via national carbon cuts. Rich countries help poorer ones.
Now see Canada, because they are “better” people than Americans, and also because their prime minister has more power, has ratified some of the agreements that America has not, most notably the last two, the CRC and the ICC. They also are in the Paris Agreement, but now that Trump is in office America is probably most definitely out, if it even counted being in to begin with. Being in the ICC has put Canada in a bit of pickle lately because of Benjamin Netanyahu, who the court has accused of war crimes and has demanded its member states to detain and deliver the Israeli leader up to the court for a trial. For its part, the Canadian government issued a rather squishy statement,
“Canada respects the independence of the ICC and its processes. We have always supported accountability for serious international crimes, no matter who is responsible.”
This echoes Canada’s line during the ICC prosecutor’s May 20, 2024, warrant application—support for the court, not the specifics.”
That’s hardly the ringing endorsement one would expect from a country that was specifically instrumental for the creation of the court.
Let’s face it, it would be hilarious for Canada to arrest Bibi, just so the USA could invade to rescue its ally. If I was President Trump, I would be begging Bibi to, just once, go skiing in Whistler to find out what the Canadians would do. Would they *really* arrest the Prime Minister of a country which provides a great deal of strategic and technical defense assets to the most powerful country in the world, and who is, lately without a hint of irony, threatening to make Canada it’s “51st state?” I do not know but I would sure love to find out. It would make going to visit my family a lot easier and cheaper.
Bibi’s probably not coming so I don’t have to worry about the uptick in carjacking and men from LA. Canada is most likely safe for now and will probably find a way to stave off any kind of annexation (sad) even if it will be a hard political pill for Canadians to swallow. But even if Bibi came, there’s very little doubt in my mind that Canada wouldn’t be able to do much different but roll out the red carpet and eat a lot of crow. They aren’t going to do anything because without the backing of the United States of America, international law doesn’t really exist. If it does, it’s whatever the United States of America says it is.[i]
“This would make a wonderful interrogation chamber. Tight quarters, no air, bad lighting, random electric shocks—it’s perfect.”
Can a law be a law if there’s no one there to enforce it? To the rest of the world and maybe Glenn Greenwald, there needs to be a moral justification, a reason, that the drones of the most powerful country in the world can fly sorties over some third world shithole, inhabited by medieval sadists, that think nothing of capturing, raping, torturing, murdering, and then holding hostage the bodies of babies for years of their mostly peaceful neighbor next door, that just happens to be the BFF of the most powerful country in the world - as if those things weren’t enough.
But without the USA, and it’s gigantic stick, there would be lots of countries doing that all the time, just like they did before WW2 and the establishment of “international law” or the “rules based order” or the “global world order” or whatever you’d like to call this conceit that men can conduct a “civilized war” and still actually win it. America has certainly been involved in skirmishes and things *approaching* war, but with less than 10,000 deaths since the end of Vietnam, it hardly seems to compare. No one is pulling the steel boning out of their corsets to build battleships, or pretending this stuff is butter. My grandmother told me about the war at the beginning, after Pearl Harbor. She said, “We had no ships, no planes, no tanks. We were a tiny country far away from Europe and Japan. We had no idea why they would attack us.” I guess it’s easier to see in hindsight, but also had the Japanese known what would become of them, they might have not decided to go on that day in December.
The bombing of Japan, as horrid as it was, was the definitive “end” of the war. Realizing that continuing would accomplish nothing but the total obliteration of Japan, the Emperor conceded, signed a peace treaty, and the war in the Pacific was over. There’s a lot to say about the nuclear weapons that ended the war, but how the loss was communicated is not nearly as important as knowledge of the inevitable loss. That is what really stops wars: the inescapable conclusion that you are going to die and that you are going to lose. Not a bomb or a plane or a dreadnaught, no, you have the choice to fight to the death or live to fight another day that may never come, or maybe just live, but no matter what, the cause is lost and you know it. It’s not you aren’t dying, it’s how you are choosing to die that matters because nothing else does.
“When you attacked the Malinche, you proved one thing; that the Maquis have become an intolerable threat to the security of the Federation, and I am going to eliminate that threat.”
And America hasn’t won a war since WW2. In fact, it’s been barely allowed to fight one, so I don’t even know what Dave is talking about. He claims that our money goes to fight these “endless wars” but does it? I mean, do we actually fight them?
America could end the troubles in Gaza by tomorrow. It could fly sorties over Gaza, drop enormous bombs on Gaza, drone strike it, litter it with mines and mortars, cut off all aid and supply lines, starve it, poison the wells, taint anything useful with disease, break the sewers, confiscate the animals, and anything of real value, raze all the buildings and kill every man woman and child in the country. It could probably do it in a single day. Then Israel could come in, bulldoze it all away. Aside from the opprobrium, what would the world do? And what would it lose? Anything? Do the Gazans possess some secret trade that would be useful to the world, other than a seeming infinite ability to cause gruesome death?
Or vice versa because I think the claim that Israel is “reliant” on the USA is greatly exaggerated. America receives unbelievable technology from Israel. The brains in Tel Aviv and Haifa are useful to America because they create all kinds of things like targeting systems for our tanks and Iron domes. Maybe they even have space lasers, and these are all things they are happy to share with their American cousins. Unlike Canada, which seems loath to lift a finger to look to its own defense, Israel is a competent ally that certainly would come to our aid at the mere whisper of trouble and be much more useful than the human shields to our north.
The problem would be over because dead people don’t seek revenge, don’t need cities rebuilt or international aid to keep them alive. For centuries that’s how wars really ended. The complete annihilation of an irritating people troubled no one. If it was the result of asymmetrical warfare, good. The fewer of “our” people dying for it, the better. The loser wouldn’t even be noticed or remembered and if it was, well they had it coming. Now we call it genocide and say it’s “illegal” because reasons. But let’s game this out; say America actually did all that. Sure, there would be an outcry, and the world would call Americans “bullies” and “genociders” and “colonists” and “imperialists” and “racists” and “violent assholes.” That would be totally different that how the world treats America and Americans today. Right?[ii]
But would the world throw away their iPhones and their gaming PCs? Would they stop watching Netflix and Amazon prime and Disney? Would they refuse to buy grain, oil, oranges and weapons from Americans? Could you no longer sell a Ford F150 outside of Wyoming or Jack Daniels outside of Tennessee? Would they refuse to by the medications they need, half of which, in any given year, was made by American big pharma? Would no one want Ozempic, Viagra, or Propecia? In a recent trip to the grocery here in Canada, I saw a sign on front of the store describing a symbol used to indicate American imported products. The store was not high end enough to pull things from the shelves but in the produce section I could only find one thing, oranges, that came from the USA. Canada may boycott some American products, but since they were importing so few of them to begin with, it probably won’t make a dent in the American economy. And if it does, there will be plenty of time before the midterms to recover. But despite the fatwa on American groceries and bourbon, I’m sure the Apple store will still be open after this is all said and done.
Would people stop coming to our borders by the gross, dying to be let in, if even for a moment? Would they stop looking to America to mediate every nascent war? Would Americans no longer be expected to shoulder the incredible cost? All for the price of one easy genocide and an acknowledgement that the world’s values aren’t America’s values?
That sounds like such a relief. That sounds like something a lot of Americans would be willing to live with. Yeah, I guess we would feel bad for the Palestinian babies, but damn, look at them! They are jihadists in waiting! Maybe it would be better for America and the whole world if they just didn’t make it. We’d be putting them out of their misery. Maybe we would be doing these poor babies a favor. Maybe we would be doing everyone a favor. America would be completely out, finally. That’s what you want, isn’t it, Dave?
It's a mere technicality; we both know what you're doing. And I promise you, you're going to face the consequences.
Dave’s argument goes like this, or at least I think it does. I’ve never seen him do anything other than accuse people of straw manning his argument whenever they try to repeat it back to him. America has intervened in one too many wars and if it intervenes in this one, it will just perpetuate the cycle of hate that is causing these wars, an ouroboros of causality from which America can only escape if it cuts off its best and, possibly, only capable ally in the world, and recede to its own business and maybe..maybe… if something is really, really important, it can scramble the jets. Have I got that right, Dave? I admit. I can see the allure of that course of action.
Let’s start with the history Dave is so fond of quoting back. A tit-for-tat play that that goes on since the thirties or forties that makes the West, if not the “bad guys” in the story, at least not the innocent party it “pretends” to be. It’s at this point Dave usually makes an emotional plea, “can you see why [Gazans, Palestinians] would feel that way?” It’s emotional blackmail of the worst kind. Unfortunately it works because people often fall silent. What could someone say about that?! And then he goes on to say something of the effect that the horror of war would create a whole new generation of jihadis and then the war will continue forever.
Years ago, I was evicted. I lived in that apartment for decades, had kids, and was a solo parent and the rent was atrociously low. Our landlords, a company where all the principals lived in Hong Kong, wanted me (and a whole bunch of other tenants) out. To facilitate that, the company had hired a large psychopath for a building manager. This guy seemed to get almost a sexual gratification by throwing old and vulnerable people out on the street. In less than a year, the smokers and the pet owners were gone. Then he started focusing on the people he just didn’t like. The people who had hordes, or maybe ran small businesses, or even just had sex too loud, or had plants on their balcony or curtains on their windows. They may have not been ideal tenants, but they had lived there for years and throwing them out now left them with no place to go. Several wound up in hospitals. One even died. I hated him. I still do. In fact I hate everything about that, the building, the tenants that wouldn’t help me, the friends that wouldn’t help me, the lawyers I pled with to help me and weren’t interested, the fact that I knew the tribunal system was tipped to the landlords, the politicians that did nothing when I complained that the timelines were really tight, that the judge in this case didn’t really have to follow the law or be consistent, and that the hearing was over the phone where the judge couldn’t see our disproportionate sizes, and that I lost, and that the judgment was made on parole evidence, and that the building manager provably lied and I could prove it only after the fact, and that appealing the judgment was almost impossible, and that I had three days to move out.
My rage was almost intolerable. But I had a choice, as limited and as unpleasant that they were. The whole fight was destroying me mentally and costing a fortune, my kid was afraid of the cameras the manager had put everywhere. I had an easy out as a family member finally stepped in and forked over a goodly sum of money and a continuous guarantee for support. The landlord was willing to give me time and my security deposit back. It would have been foolish to stay and litigate out of pride. Moreover, it would have been bad for the kid. I would have been a bad mother.
I heard through the grapevine that the building manager finally got violent with one of the new tenants. I hope he’s in jail. I hope he dies there. I hope they all die a long, painful death. There are very few things in this world I can say I confidently hate, but this event and that building manager is one. Nevertheless, I had to accept it and move on and now, while things aren’t perfect, they are much better.
I guess I could have done what the Gazans did. Instead of moving on I could refuse. I could blame everyone but myself (I was not blameless in my eviction, I knew he was dangerous for years and didn’t leave – even if I hardly deserved all that.) I could tell my child to forgo their lives. No, it doesn’t matter. They don’t need to go to school or live in peace or get jobs or find love. Only my rage - given to me by a righteous God - matters. They need to avenge my disgrace forever. Harass the tenants with rocks and knives, throw incendiaries at the building and burn it down, file application after application in any court that will have them forever, beyond the statute of limitations until maybe some judge somewhere gives me a thing I can’t really have. Maybe assault, rape or even murder a bunch of Chinese or encourage my kids to die or their kids to die or their kids’ kids to die because all that matters, everything, is my rage.
My question to Dave is this: the building manager is gone, maybe even the building is sold to another owner, every tenant I knew is also gone or dead. Should the people living in that building *now* be forced to suffer because I’m a terrible parent? Wouldn’t it just be easier to come and take my kids away? Or throw them in jail? Or just kill them. Because that seems like the only way this ends with your scenario. So no, no I would not understand why a people would feel that way. I do not understand any mother or parent or king that would condemn their children to death for eternity because of my selfish rage. So, no. I don’t understand how they feel and never will. And it is irrelevant. They want to kill people I care about, and we need if we are being honest. Even if I felt sorry for them, it would change nothing.
“This war isn't over, and you're already planning for the next.”
Dave’s arguments it that war begets war. That the more you fight against the tide the more resentment you leave in the people left alive. There may be some truth to that. But of course, there’s an answer to that and Dave isn’t going to like it very much.
Fortunately, that’s not how most people actually work. That’s how Hollywood, wanting a good revenge tale works, but most people, faced with their own certain and complete annihilation, decide to go into a different direction. Just point a gun at an unarmed person and see how docile they will immediately become. (Actually, don’t do that, it’s probably VERY illegal.) This is so much the case, it has to be trained out of people, from birth apparently, because that has been what the Gazans have continued to do.
Most people don’t want revenge. They want to move on with their lives. That’s what happened in Germany, that’s what happened in Japan, that’s what happened with the Native Americans as tribe after tribe was decimated. It takes so much energy to get revenge, so much planning. Sometimes it takes a lot of luck. And maybe you can do something on the margins, but a full-scale attack on the lines of 9/11? That isn’t happening.
But the alternative can be so much worse. If an attack is not answered, or the reply is tepid, then the price is not too high to do it again. Should America convince the world she doesn’t have the stomach to fight a war, any war, then there is no cost to prosecuting one again and again and all of sudden American tax money is going to fund rebels in Belarus or Moldova. So much cheaper to just destroy a random country for faint reasons to remind everyone who is still in charge. Refusing to answer the call to war, because you fear an angry child might, in some future, be more likely light themselves on fire than get off a bomb, that’s not principle, that’s cowardice.
The continuation of the cycle of revenge is far less likely to happen if you completely destroy the resentment factory that is Gaza. I’m not saying to kill every single person in it or seize every child under six and adopt them out to a more friendly society, which was how these problems were solved in the bad old days. But encouraging them to leave the land, resettle in other countries where they would still maintain some of their Islamic identity, but where that country can comfortably place restrictions on ideology like banning the Muslim Brotherhood, isn’t the worst idea I’ve ever heard in my life. Now they would be scattered, avoiding the critical mass of people needed to pull off something like October 7th or the strategic network needed for a 9/11. Maybe then they can move on. Maybe their children can then move on, now convinced that their parents had it all wrong and in fifteen years time, I’ll be able to buy tickets to the Gazan’s version of “The Boy and the Heron”. It’s got to be better than this. Right now, the status quo is kids are dying, so I cannot see how it gets worse. The thing that needs to die is this idea that war can be managed, by reasonable people, over a cup of tea. And that there is – really – no law.
“This was a great victory. One worthy of story and song.”
Fortunately for those kids, there does come a point where people, like the Japanese did in 1945, realise that it’s just not worth continuing. They know now that the more they push, the less they get. It may take an act of incredible violence, it may have to involve the killing of innocents, it may mean something that is akin to a genocide, if not falling under the carefully constructed definition – just for this reason. But I hope for most Gazans, the need for self preservation will kick in at some point and, completely demoralized, they will move on just like I did. We are talking about hoomans after all. And certain humans are just too dangerous to tangle with. America blinked in Afghanistan and now I have to care about someplace called “the Donbass.”
Dave is a libertarian. I know most people outside of America don’t know what that is, but really, compared to the rest of the world, *every* American is a libertarian. In the eyes of a libertarian, every government is suspect, and they are never more suspect when they are doing wars. Wars require many things that stick in the craw of your average libertarian. Power, money, secrecy..loose lips sink ships, dontcha’ know? In a perfect libertarian world, there’d be little to no government and certainly no war machine. The fact that it even exists, much less is being used around the world is an anathema. And using all that money! MY MONEY! So complains the libertarian.
There’s a reason the second book of the Bible is about just that problem. Cain could have left Able alone, but now he’s wandering around somewhere on earth with some mark that makes him impervious to reprisals, like a weird ancient superman. Maybe Cain is war, maybe that was the point of the story, that it is immortal, and lurking everywhere, forever in the hearts of men, and there is no winning against that. And it is probably not accidental that every libertarian I’ve known is your standard white dude who couldn’t fight off a three-year-old, much less a psychopathic Sudanese warlord – which is what happens when you don’t have a government. This is something Douglas has seen, and knows, intuitively even if couldn’t articulate in the moment. And that was the point of asking if he had been there because Dave has not.
The libertarian paradise that Dave imagines cannot exist if the story of Cain and Able or the Federation and the Dominion is the true nature of reality. Despite his desire for radical independence, if other people will bond together, they will quickly be an overwhelming force that will come and take whatever they want from people like Dave. Of course, Dave could also gang up with some like minded fellows, but then you need someone to lead it and now, like it or not, you have a government. Because that is government’s only real job. Dave just doesn’t like it.
The only way to convince people that they don’t need government is to make the government bad. So, all governments must be bad, and all exercise of government power must be inherently bad, and therefore the most powerful government in the world, America’s must also be bad. And where does this bad government exercise this bad power in the most bad way possible? Why, the rest of the innocent world. And what could be worse than the government exercising power on subjects not under its jurisdiction? Facilitating the power of other countries to exercise power over weaker countries that end results means the death of innocent babies. That cannot possibly be moral in any way, regardless of the circumstances so, ergo, all governments are bad and should be disbanded or shrunk until they are “invisible.”
This isn’t new, obviously, considering how much the founders of America imbibed this sentiment into the Constitution of the USA, and it has most certainly served us and the rest of the world well. For reasons that I wrote about in Mean Girls, my essay I wrote about Canada in a fit of complete pique, the freedoms contained in that document were instrumental, probably even essential to make America what she is today. But even the founders knew there were limits. That’s why the branches have equal power, and why the president, an authoritarian position by its very nature, even exists, and why when it comes to war, he gets to run it. The one advantage to fascism is that it is efficient. And in times of conflict, speed and efficiency are essential. Nothing good comes from running a war by committee or by consent.
Women, of course, are more aware of the risks associated without an overarching and fair authority to mitigate male danger. You can bet that even if you didn’t have a government, a bunch of gals would get together and use their feminine wiles to make one. Usually with the meanest guys with guns. I have, and other women have, known for centuries that to get rid of the man that’s chasing you, you could always size up one that may be less of a hazard to you, but enough of a hazard to your pursuer, and pretend to know him. “I have a boyfriend, sorry.” Scaled up, you won’t be able to rely on your man to be with you all the time or be able to always protect you. Government, police, and military deterrence is a much effective form of protection. In fact, government is much less risky investment than any individual man for practically everything if that explains why a lot of women vote the way they do.[iii]
You can go on any podcast you want, and talk about the illuminati, the WEF, the fed, the Rothschilds all you want. I regret to inform Dave that you have a government because you have women and as long as you have women you will have a government. And it’s a woman’s hand that rocks the cradle. It’s the woman’s hand that makes the terrorist. “Put mother on the phone!” Nothing about Gaza, Iraq or retconning Churchill is going to change that. No, Israel and the Jews are just the easiest story in the world to use to forward a ridiculous case that the American government is completely corrupt, useless, and malevolent. Dave isn’t an antisemite or at least wasn’t until now. It’s not Gaza or Israel that should be unraveled; it’s America that’s the problem. That’s what Douglas kept missing because it didn’t even cross his mind. That was what was at the core of the jelly.
“Silent leges inter arma. Cicero.”
It is very chic now to say that the invasion and conquering of Iraq by the Americans was a mistake. The argument goes that since Iraq is now not a western democracy that the war failed in its mission. This would be another shining example according to Dave and the people like him that America’s interventionism in the world is ill conceived, brutal, and meaningless. This is a mistake. It is a mistake because it misreads the mission. I know that the American people were promised a glorious revolution. They were told that Iraq would, like China, join the west as another province of liberalism and freedom. Of course, none of that happened, but Iraq was not a failure if your goal was just maintaining the status quo.
Let’s go back to the international laws that America has agreed to, specifically this one:
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT, 1968)
What it is: Arms control treaty (191 parties).
What it says: Nuclear states (U.S., Russia, etc.) won’t spread nukes; non-nuclear states won’t build them; all push disarmament eventually.
Both Iraq and Iran were signatories to this treaty. Moreover, they were not recognized as nuclear states. Treaties work because signatories follow their rules but also because other countries enforce those rules. Whether Iraq had weapons or not they were clearly trying to obtain or build them to fend off Iran, who was also trying to find or build them. This violated the terms of the treaty. It’s not so much America chose to do something, but they were obligated to do something under international law. Sure, probably all the other countries were too, but again, these other countries are just not good at the “The Things” and America was their only option. Of course, Canada was all in on the treaty as well, but that didn’t stop Chretién at the time from saying:
“If military action proceeds without a new resolution of the Security Council, Canada will not participate.”
This hides behind the letter of the law and ignores it’s spirit. In any case, where there was smoke there was fire because in 2004 Saddam himself told his interrogators:
“We did not have the capability [for nuclear weapons], but we had the desire to acquire them in the future.”
That suspicion was enough. It should have elicited a response from the UN and the Security Council, specifically. America’s folly wasn’t that it invaded Iraq, something it was legally obligated to do, but refusing to bow to cowardice.
The only reason Iraq does not at this moment have a nuclear weapon is because of America. America took its obligation seriously. America *could* invade and prosecute the war. There are still millions of Iraqis, so it would be hard to argue that America engaged in genocide, at least as it’s defined by the UN. And as soon as Iraq was no longer in the picture, Iran paused, if just for a moment, its own weapons program.
It and the rest of America’s enemies had gotten the message in no uncertain terms:
Threaten the United States, and America and whoever else wants to ride along, will kill you. They will kill you, your family, your army and anyone else they need or want to until you as a concept cease to exist.
That’s how you promote the peace. That’s how you keep your stupid “rules-based order.” And you better let the USA do it or there is going to be a much bigger, nastier war. Nature abhors a vacuum and that giant sucking sound is the world sucking in her breath hoping the Americans “do something.” If America had not done what she did, Iraq would now be in possession of a nuclear weapon and Iran would have been highly motivated to get one. Today now instead of the one nuclear problem, we would have had two. But it’s difficult to argue hypotheticals and prove a negative so people don’t believe it or don’t want to. Like it or not, that mission was a success. For now.
“It wouldn’t be make-believe if you believe in me”
Douglas seems like he kept missing it, this black, anti-American sentiment at the core of Dave’s argument, but maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe Murray didn’t miss it, it was just unbearable it was just so fucking embarrassing. To fight the assertion that America is a malevolent force in the world, would mean Murray would have had to do something that Europeans and Canadians and a whole host of other foreigners are loath to do: admit America is just better. They hate that. Hate. It.
America is better at everything. No, it is. Sorry. Fuck you. Oh sure, Germany makes some nice cars, and England…IDK Chedder? Norway has a lot of oil, I hear, but that pales in comparison to what the USA provides in creative and useful things. I already wrote in another essay why this is true for Canada, but the rest of the world is probably a variation on that unfortunate theme. It’s not accidental that JD Vance explicitly mentioned free speech in his dressing down of Europe. And the rest of the world knows this, even if they don’t ever want to admit it. They know they can’t compete. Why protest Tesla and Elon Musk, a man who has nothing to do with foreign policy at all? Why the Tesla dealerships? Because they are *there* and because they are amazing, just like Apple and Disney and Amazon and Merck and Lockheed Martin.
No, Murray would have had to reveal the ugly truth and try to convince Dave of it. Instead, he hoped that Dave, having visited *any* other country, would know what remains unsaid. He would have had to plead, saying,
“Look, the rest of the world is not good at “The Things” and the most important of those “things” is defence. If America bails, the whole world has a problem. You have to understand that. I’m sorry, we did it to ourselves while trying to convince ourselves and Americans they were just like us or even lesser than us. It was a lie, a horrible slanderous lie, and now we can’t stand on our own two feet without you. I am so sorry. You would know that if you had been anywhere, and not like Tucker Carlson, but just like a regular person no one wanted to impress. The failures of the health system, the dereliction of our armies, the complete and utter surrender to authoritarian impulses that put people in jail for Facebook posts and take away their freedom for nothing. And this is not new, this isn’t just post-Covid. It’s always been there since the days of residential schools and the Star Chamber. We even take America’s good things and ruin them and then complain about them like it was America who made its fast food expensive and slow. WE ARE NOT GOOD AT THE THINGS. You, America, are the only country that is good at the things and if you had been anywhere and seen anything you would know it. Then you would have seen it. You might not say anything, because doing so would aggravate a whole slew of people. You might throw yourself on that particular IED like Pierre Poilievre, but you would have *seen* it and I wouldn’t have to tell you it. We have all been lying to you, America, and we’ve doing it for decades.”
It would have been humiliating in a way maybe even Murray, with his intellectual conceits couldn’t bear.
See here’s the thing, Dave, the world stays peaceful because it’s afraid of what America *might* do, not what it actually does. Its enemies are afraid that if they push too far, into too many places, America is going to snap it back into place – because it can. That is what is happening now with the tariffs, but it could be a lot worse.
Emboldened by the impression that American wouldn’t care about the Donbass and that the American public wouldn’t be so gung-ho to intervene, Russia pushed on. And it did that because it knew that the rest of Europe wouldn’t do a fucking thing about it. It couldn’t do anything about it. China has obviously engaged in a long-term strategy to insinuate itself into Canada and possibly Mexico, although it’s stickier down there. Cartels are violent things and can make things for the Chinese unpleasant if they want to do so, but Canadians are beholden to Chinese money because their economy really doesn’t actually work. It would collapse without the United States. Do you even know what is going on with the healthcare? Just look up “yearlong wait for MRI, brain cancer.” It’s a disaster.
The world may not instantly fall apart. It wouldn’t happen all at once, a skirmish here and skirmish there. It’s possible our allies would finally admit what has been going on, tell their people to buckle up, and fix their internal problems in ways that the United States could never do. But the front is always moving, the war isn’t over, and maybe the front is already here.
Instead, these supposedly “tough” European-Canadians cry and turn into fascists and do whatever it is the “elbows up” crowd is trying to do. They would do almost anything but fight with the Russians or admit they might not be all that buddy buddy with the Chinese. China is a country that also tariffs Canada, floods the country with drugs, and kills their Canadian hostages, but everyone pretends that these countries will go running to them in a pinch. They will NOT. This “lie” is going to snap Canada in two if it doesn’t stop, because Albertans will only put up with so much. That’s why Trump keeps pushing the 51st state business. He knows it drives them nuts and angry people make mistakes.
“Someone has to protect men like you from a universe that doesn't share your sense of right and wrong.”
If you asked me, it would go like this: Alberta would go first, fed up with being the gravy train for the rest of country. As per American law, it must become a non-voting territory first, but once that happens, America can station bases and whatever it needs smack in the middle of Canadian heartland. Unlike America in the 1860s, Canada neither has the will nor the firepower to bring the province back in line. If they did, America would have less to complain about. Then British Columbia would go as it creaks under the strain of now being Canada’s biggest breadwinner with money it spends as fast as it earns. It’s leader, the moronic David Eby, lawyer, has already begun the complete destruction of BC’s tourist/Hollywood/timber/shipping industry. And the government has already run out of money. Once an American territory, there would be a flood of Americans to this beautiful and astonishing land.
I am singularly uninterested in this. There are some advantages to living in a fascist country. I don’t have to deal with the urban guns or the culture that brings them. As native Canadians are pushed out and from the sheer number of people flood in, the high trust society I currently live in becomes a low trust one, with its crime and indifference. And while it would be nice to have some friends who are like me (well, sort of) the rent is really goddam high. Better for me, and everyone here, that we cut our losses, dump the dumb pride and just do the reasonable things being asked for by the Americans. It’s better than getting evicted. Trust me on this.
Once Alberta and BC leave, I do not see the Western provinces holding out. So much simpler to just make one large corridor from California to Alaska which Eby and his ilk can’t tax. The Yukon would be isolated and tempted by the capital investment that floods into any place where American business can set up shop easily now with the blessing of the American people. So would the Northwest Territories and whatever Saskatchewan and Manitoba what to do probably wouldn’t matter. I have no idea what New Brunswick or Labrador would do, but they have always struck me as practical people. Maybe they can teach the Americans “Barrett’s Privateers.” That would leave Quebec, a useless if charming province and Ontario, a welfare state. They could remain Canada as Americans wouldn’t want a Puerto Rico of the north.
Sure, Canada could kick out China. It could start arresting people for drug dealing and money laundering, or even just make it illegal. It could stop being frendzies with Huawei. It could inspect its port in Delta; it could tell us who is really in bed with China in the government. It could throw out the Net Zero/Green Energy/Tribal Chiefs and start scouring its land to anything it could sell to anybody, including the USA. It could tell the Quebec and its dairy farmers that it’s over and now they have to either go at it alone or go find real jobs.
It could really make a commitment to free speech and honest political discourse. It could stop insisting that people asking questions about graves are bigots. It could reassure its people, and all the foreign investment it pretends to want, that it will never go around seizing bank accounts again. It could stop importing people that hate the west and are possibly plotting to use the land as a staging ground for a terrorist attack on the USA.
And Canadians could stop pretending to like the worst people in the world just to spite the most generous, kindest, bravest, most innovative and accepting people in the world. Americans don’t deserve that. YOU, Dave, do not deserve that, even if you think you do. The world would be lost without America, and if you had been there, you would know it, just like Douglas does. Just like I do.
“Our gods are dead. Ancient Klingon warriors slew them a millennia ago. They were more trouble than they were worth.”
By the end of the war in Star Trek, Deep Space Nine, the pretence at the values of the federation have broken down. Both sides have resorted to multiple violations of what we would consider the Geneva Convention. The Federation strikes first, using biological weapons on the Changelings, although we don’t know about it until the very end. They’ve also set mines and IEDs, spied and murdered their allies when it was expedient, killed prisoners, taken on the uniforms of the enemy, and engaged in forbidden arms trading and usage. The Dominion for its part uses human shields, ethnic cleansing, executes prisoners of war cumulating in an orgy of genocide. It is only by a sci-fi miracle that Deep Space Nine doesn’t end with total darkness, where one side completely eliminates the other, but what do you expect from an adventure show that’s main selling point is hope?
But selling hope only works for Barak Obama apparently. In the real world, there are no wormhole aliens to send people back in time, or give you an eternal life, or eliminate your enemy from existence, or give you the ability to see into the future. Such are the joys of science fiction: a happy ending is had by all (Well, except for Girl Boss Kira. The writers couldn’t even pretend that works.)
I would give Dave and his ilk one concession: that leaving Ukraine, and giving the Donbass to Russia, might be the only way to stave off a bigger, more serious war later. If all it does is finally convince Europe that despite America’s considerable power and effectiveness, the constant stream of petty, jealous nonsense that comes from Europe’s (and Canada’s) leaders’ mouths about America being a “bully” or “imperialist” or “morons” or “fascist” needs to stop. The Trump administration has essentially said as much, commenting, “This is not our war.” By doing so they are telegraphing not to the Ukranians or the Russians their desires, but Europe. “Shut up and help yourselves for once” is the message. And I bet they hear that loud and clear, even if it’s very confusing for Ben Shapiro. It’s important to remember that the American President never has a private conversation with the American people.
The continuous insults will only have the effect of convincing more and more people like Dave that the world does not need America nor does it want her. We all know this is not true, but Dave et. al. is certainly not going to come here, like I did by accident, and find out. It doesn’t matter how many international “laws” you pass, or how many treaties are negotiated, or how many ICC warrants you issue; if Americans don’t want it, it doesn’t happen. That is what “international law” means and if America takes its little red, white, and blue ball home, the game is over. Everyone in the world knows it, even Dave and his America doesn’t.
Murray doesn’t need to talk to Rogan or Dave, he needs to talk to Starmer and Carney and Macron and everyone else he probably knows personally in the world and tell them,
“Cool it. Americans are not of the mind to listen to you complain about *anything*. If they were, they wouldn’t have elected Donald Trump. This isn’t coming from one man, it’s coming from over half the country. I’ve been there and seen it. The man is irrelevant.”
Then, these countries need to get serious about Trump’s (aka the American people’s) demands. They are not unwarranted, and we all know it. In the meantime, I am more than willing to take care of my own. As I am a legacy libertarian, I will try to convince my fellows that America is important to the world for a least a little while longer - even if I think all you condescending assholes deserve to be told to go kick rocks. International law be damned. America is the law, and without her, it doesn’t exist. Otherwise, I look forward to being a resident of the 51st state.
I'd like to get my hands on that fellow Earl Grey and tell him a thing or two about tea leaves.
On the rewatch of Star Trek, the Next Generation, I realized that this vision was something I simply took for granted. That there was OBVIOUSLY a right way and a wrong way to exist in the world and this was “the Right Way.” But despite its seeming banality, ST:TNG is about conquest. Not about place, although it sometimes did include that, but about the conquest of the mind. It seeks to put aside what we know to be true about the hoomans, and believes that there will come a time when the angels of our better nature run the roost.
And this is the science fiction mirror reflection of the belief of the West - a West that would not exist were it not for the real hard power of the United States. Sure, the USA has lucked into certain geographies that provide a natural barrier to invasion. But it is also good at things other countries are not good at, like building militaries and strong-arming dictators and ensuring passage in the Red Sea. Americans would like nothing better than to quit that job. As I have said, all Americans are libertarians – until they are Klingons.
But wouldn’t you be when every time you’ve asked for one simple thing - you are met by a bunch of Germans crying about how bullied they are? All you wanted was the right to vote in Parliament, the right to trade with France, the right ignore a stupid world war, the right to collect a terrorist from Afghanistan, an ask for foreign countries *not* to block your dairy or flood your country with criminals and drugs or maybe other countries to pay and staff their own militaries Give me a fucking break. It seems to me that the *only* country we should be helping is Israel and the rest of the world can go jack off itself, but Jesus, now there are Russians in Greenland, and we have to scramble the jets. Honestly, I don’t give a flying fuck about the Donbass, but for some reason my money is going there. I couldn’t even find it on a map, and I don’t want to. Why can’t England and Canada and France care about this? We. Are. Busy. And we can’t afford this.
I get what Dave is saying, I just think he’s saying it about the wrong people. If Dave wants this magical world where America retreats and can mind its own business and not have the world follow it home, it needs to make sure there’s at least one other country that can stand in the breach. To stave off China and Russia and Iran and North Korea, we probably need a whole bunch. But the West doesn’t seem too interested in listening to the American people as much as the Rachel Maddows of this world, who is representative of a tiny and dwindling fraction of the electorate, something they would know if they had come to America and met with Dave Smith. We are, of course, trusting that our newly empowered allies will still hold sacrosanct those values we most desire: comity, freedom, and peace. They could just as easily turn those guns on us and now, feeble and weaker, we would have to go along with whatever it was that *they* said, even if it meant strafing babies in some foreign land. It seems more and more a gamble the American people are willing to make.
“The Romulan and Klingon Empires are in no position to invade anyone. Besides, the Federation would not allow it.”
Gene Roddenberry fought alongside my grandfather in the Pacific theater in WW2. While my grandfather maintained the electronics on submarines for the United States Navy, Roddenberry flew over eighty-nine combat missions as a pilot in the Air Force. It was that experience that shaped his ideas for Star Trek, stating in a 1988 documentary,
“I’d seen war, flown through it, crashed in it. I wanted to show a future where we’d learned something—where we’d taken that energy and pointed it outward, not at each other.”
He, my kind and loving grandfather, and the rest of the world, was tired of war. In the post war era, the west created a system that was designed with the hopes they would never have to fight a war again. They created the UN and the ICC; they came up with the concept of a “war crime” and expected everyone to adhere to that. They pursued a policy of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons as if it were a religion. They quelled little wars before they got to big ones. They expanded and funded (well, sort of) NATO, and they tried to create free trade zones so that everyone could benefit from the genius and productivity of the west, no matter what country created it. That was the United Nations, the Federation; that was the goal, a cooperative “rules-based order” where everyone played the same game, the same way, and whatever came out of that was “fair.” And that’s what’s embedded into Star Trek, but it is a fiction. Maybe the problem is we need aliens to make it work, and so far, they haven’t arrived.
If we applied Star Trek:TNG to real world human behavior, we know what would have happened were it not for the guiding hand of the idealistic writers. Troi does not seem to resent Riker for his caddish behavior, even though, in today’s world, he’d have probably been #metoo’d out of Starfleet by now. Wesley too, would have dropped out of the academy, now alone and tainted with the death of his classmate and being too much of a liability for the lawyers. Also, he has AuADHD and an Adderall prescription and uses They/Them pronouns.
Back to the aliens being aliens and not reasonable, American-coded hoomans, the Cardassians would have scorched the colonies, and the Borg would have taken the rest. The federation would be fraying at the seams because the Pakleds and the Ferengi would refuse to pay the dues. Klingons would have a perpetual war with the Vulcans and predictably lose every time. The Andorrans would boo the Earth’s team at the Parisie squares championships. The Luna Colony would be an Islamic Caliphate and continue to attack Mars. No one really knows with the Romulans are doing, but everyone knows it’s nothing good. Nevertheless, there’s a trade deficit with them. Picard would be running the Federation, but no one is really sure whether it’s him or an AI. Barclay has a youtube channel that constantly questions it. Jordie is out of a job and hooked on Ketracel-white. Data got recycled. No one knows what happened to Miles O’Brian. He refuses to use Facebook.
We can’t keep living in a Star Trek Next Generation world forever. This liberal world order doesn’t track easily on real life and now is rapidly falling apart. Like Captain Sisko and Jake, we’ve moved to Deep Space Nine and that requires realities like money and death and sometimes doing things you don’t want to do. During battle there is nothing more honorable than winning, and winning is why the West doesn’t have to contend with things like murderous raids from the neighbors like it's 1812.
“Let's make a deal, doctor. I'll spare you the ends justify the means speech and you spare me the we must do what's right speech.”
To suggest that there is some alternative to America, or something better than America, is a naive view of the world. It is just not true. And the one thing about being there, for a while, as part of it, is that it gives you perspective. This thing moving across the landscape, this front, or whatever it is that Murray and I are trying to explain, has certainly has moved too close for Murray’s and my comfort because we can see it from here. I know America can’t see it, but trust us, we went there, and there it was. But Dave and millions of Americans have not. They believe that long before this thing gets to the United States that someone else would stop it. Only “our” borders need protecting and only “our” borders deserve it. Everything else is a wasteful expensive endeavor, doomed to failure and spite. And why do they think that? Because they were convinced by people like Chretien, Hollande, Merkel, and Tsipras that brave French and German and Greek and Finnish soldiers are more than capable of handling the predatory regimes to their East. Certainly they would be more competent. Of course, Greenland can take care of themselves. The Danish were fucking Vikings! No America needed.
Douglas should have explained to Dave that the world needs America because the war never really ended; and it can come back tomorrow if world actors think that Americans are really done with it. Cain still roams the earth. You can see him, if you bother to look, getting ever closer. There is always one endless war, always, and the front is now in Israel, in Ukraine, in Europe. It could always move to Tiawan, and Belarus, and Pakistan. And its tendrils are already slithering through Canadian casinos and ocean ports, European human rights courts, Mexican auto plants, Western Universities, American farmland and worldwide bond markets. Give it a minute and it’s now in New Zealand, or maybe even Greenland, and then Canada has Russian/Chinese/Korean boots on its shores. And when it gets there, what? Do Canadians just pick up their nonexistent guns and start firing? Do you think that Canadians, like Americans, dream of the day when they can “Red Dawn” it and use ***all*** the guns? Or is that just some kind of libertarian fantasy, just as silly as the one laid out in Star Trek? Anyway, Dave, since you, comedian, seem to know so much about what America should and should not do vis-à-vis the world, I guess we all should listen to you while you lecture us on the morality of any given action America should take. Don’t say anyone didn’t try to warn you but make sure to let us know when things are close enough to scramble the jets. I’m sure waiting until the Dominion is at the door will work out fine for us, especially if it helps you sleep at night. It’s only too bad about the targs. Until then, Q’plah.
At the pinnacle of the war, when things are going very badly for the Federation, Captain Sisko has to make a choice to trick the Romulans into joining up with the Federation against the Dominion. After it is all said and done, a war crime by today’s standards, he writes:
So... I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder. But the most damning thing of all... I think I can live with it. And if I had to do it all over again - I would. Garak was right about one thing: a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant. So, I will learn to live with it... Because I can live with it... I can live with it... Computer - erase that entire personal log.”
[i] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Hungary from April 2 to April 6, 2025. Hungary announced its intention to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the same day Netanyahu arrived, effectively sidestepping the obligation to enforce the ICC arrest warrant issued against him in November 2024 for alleged war crimes. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomed Netanyahu with honors, and Hungary ignored a secret ICC arrest warrant sent during the visit.
[ii] Françoise Ducros (Aide to Jean Chrétien) on George W. Bush (2002): “What a moron.” (Reported by Canadian Press, November 21, 2002, during a NATO summit in Prague.)
[iii] This is something that conservatives and libertarians like Matt Walsh, Rand Paul, and the pro-life faction seem to somehow not realize. They should, because this is the thing that’s really killing them at elections. “Just trust me, bro” is not a winning platform for women who are calculating in their mind the opportunity cost that they are taking on when they go full Tradwife.