War as Music
The Fat Lady Hasn't Sung
There is much talk about US or Israel – mostly Israel—using nuclear weapons on Iran. You hear this from a wide variety of Alt Media pundits— Wilkerson, Sachs, and, of course Larry Johnson who thinks Iran should get its own weapons (they would need several) secretly.
In fact, the likelihood is very low that the US or Israel will use nuclear weapons.
Here’s why:
The US and Israel have convinced themselves they can win with conventional bombing.
The Iranians are prosecuting the war, in Russian fashion, in a slow, methodical way, not yet using its most effective weapons, for the time being focused on American bases and Israeli infrastructure.
The Americans and Israelis take this gradualist focus on military targets as a sign of weakness, along with the apparent failure of Iran to intercept many of the incoming missiles launched at population centers. Given the high quality of Iranian air defenses, low intercept rates are likely because Iran is holding back its air defenses for the time that the US and Israeli have run out of standoff missiles and must come in close to launch glide bombs. A duck shoot.
The Americans and Israelis have been destroying a lot of decoy launchers and missiles, and think themselves ahead of the game.
The constant pronouncements from Washington and the Media that the “West” is winning and Iran’s methodical, measured prosecution of the war lulls the West into accepting fantasies of victory.
Lulls?
This reminded me somehow of music.
There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard” Chapter 5. Sun Tzu. The Art of War.
What Sun Tzu means is that war, like music, is creative, depending on sustained rhythmic harmonies, repeating and interpolating, reaching for the unexpected, point counterpoint. No war is quite like any other.
This war is not like any previous one.
This war began with a chorus of orchestrated subversion, then the heavy chords of the American and Israeli attacks, the murder of the Supreme Leader. That was followed by a symphonic reply — Iran retaliating as it said it would with missiles and drones hitting bases in the GCC countries.
The Americans and Israelis have been lulled into thinking they are winning and will be victorious . But they did not write this symphony…or whatever it is….and the Fat Lady has yet to sing.
Western Supremacists believe in the myth of their superiority and the inferiority of their opponents.
They see Iranian missile attacks as acts of desperation, ineffective— because they do not kill a lot of people. They are tone deaf.
Iranians are not attacking civilians for very good reasons, focusing instead on the infrastructure and institution and equipment necessary to fight, without which the will to continue is weakened.
“Three general objects comprise everything else... military power, the country, and the will of the enemy” Clausewitz
Clausewitz argues that the defensive form of warfare is inherently stronger than the offensive, but often slower to allow the attacker’s strength to drain away, using difficult terrain and fortified positions to exhaust the enemy’s resources.
In such cases, the attacker, who wants a quick war, risks passing the “culminating point,” where their strength declines while the defender’s increases, leading to potential disaster if the attacker continues to push. The US and Israel have already passed that point. And we see disaster looming for them.
So the Iranians are fighting a war of attrition, destroying American and Israeli defense systems and assets – first the military capabilities of Western allies in the Muslim world, undermining hereditary dictatorships in Bahrein, Qatar, the UAE, the KSA, and (perhaps) Jordan. At the same time, Iran is gaining support in Iraq and Yemen and Lebanon and elsewhere.
The US?
The Trump administration is facing political attrition. It has passed the “culminating point” in domestic political wars. By summer, with the November elections looming, Trump will have spent the last of his political capital and will be down to spare change, having alienated the whole world and also the American people.
Contrary to popular belief, Israel does not own the US – rather the US owns Israel, which without US support, will collapse. It will not use nukes against Iran because if it were to that would be accelerate the end of its “special relationship” with the US and the West. The fallout would affect both nuclear armed India and Pakistan.
As for Netanyahu, someone will take him out. Most likely a Jew.
This war will not be over soon. The Iranians say they haven’t yet really begun to fight - and I think that is true .
In war, as in music, you must wait for the Finale which is why I post Nightwish’s Shoemaker
The Shoemaker
*Nuclear Blast Records
Eugene Shoemaker was a geologist and a founder of modern planetary science. He studied craters on Earth and Moon, and realized that they were created by asteroid impacts. Shoemaker was the geology principal investigator for Apollo missions, and he also helped to train the Apollo astronauts that went to the Moon. He himself was a candidate for an Apollo Moon flight but was disqualified after being diagnosed with Addison’s disease. Later in life, he said, “Not going to the Moon and banging on it with my own hammer has been the biggest disappointment in life.”
Shoemaker spent much of his later years searching for undiscovered impact craters around the world. He died on July 18, 1997, in a car accident in Australia, where he was studying craters.
In 1999, as a recognition for his scientific accomplishments, some of his ashes were carried to the Moon by the Lunar Prospector space probe. His final resting place is close to the lunar south pole, in the Shoemaker crater, named after him.
The Shoemaker’s urn was inscribed with a quotation from Romeo and Juliet reading:
“And, when he shall die
Take him and cut him out in little stars
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”
He is the only human buried on celestial body other than Earth. After his death, he finally got to go where he always wanted to be.
We need help in getting new subscribers. Please crosspost, and feel free to post urls on other blogs or X or other platforms. Every time someone does that, I get a new subscriber
Oh Julian you hit a chord with Shoemaker. I'm one of the privileged few who witnessed a meteorite impact about 600 meters away.
I was on a solitary deer hunt in Southern Arizona. Around 10PM I was extinguishing my campfire and getting ready to hit the sack. All of a sudden I heard a sound that I thought was a jet flying on afterburner. Lots of jets fly out there. I looked up and almost filled my pants at the sight of a burning rock that seemed to come right at me! I stood frozen thinking this is the end. It passed about 100 yards from me and barely cleared the near ridge. It seemed to be going as fast as a NASCAR and I verified it at a race. It was on an almost horizontal trajectory and hit the top of the opposite ridge of the canyon. When it struck it sent a jet 150 yards high. The jet had every color of the spectrum and bathed the entire area in an orange glow.
The event lasted less than a second and it's seared into my mind. I found the crater and tried to get a sample. Years later I returned to find mining activity caused the ridge to collapse in the crater.
It looked like a Stony Iron Meteor the size of a VW Bug. Imagine how much it weighs. Imagine its value!
In a recent interview with J Hinkle (love or loathe), Lt.Col. (Ret) Karen Kwiatkowski described how Israeli society was not robust enough to withstand what looks to be it’s likely inevitable future (whereas Iranian’s would survive similar) and in its collapse there would be a madness strong enough to push that red button, consequences be damned.