Blowback, Iranian-style
It's not just the United States whose foreign policy comes back to bite it.
Also: is the city of Indianapolis cursed when it comes to sports? The evidence, examined.
I’m of two minds about President Trump authorizing air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities this past weekend.
On one hand, I’ve already lived through several US-led interventions in Middle Eastern countries - and even supported them, at the time - only to witness severe unintended consequences, mainly sectarian warfare rising amidst the power vacuum resulting from the overthrow of dictators like Saddam and Gaddhafi.
I can never bring myself to have complete confidence in anything Donald Trump does, and Iran’s response could very well take the form of terror attacks - very likely against “Zionist” targets, and you know what that really means - in the West.
On the other hand, the argument that we can’t stop the unhinged Islamist psychopaths from working on a nuclear program because they might respond with the same shit they’ve been doing since 1979 will only get you so far.
Also, seeing literally all the worst human beings on earth rush to the barricades to defend the Islamic Republic is making me way more hawkish about this than is probably healthy.
My politics have evolved considerably over the years, but “whatever the Islamists, neo-Nazis, Communists, isolationists, Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba and Tucker Carlson are against, I am for” has remained one of my guiding principles.
Also, these guys really should consider changing their name.
The fact that Israel and Donald Trump in one weekend did more to bring about nuclear disarmament than the CND has done in its decades of existence is something they’ll never live down, and I am here for it.
(Update: just as I was finishing up this post, news broke about a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, so we’ll probably have forgotten this whole kerfuffle even happened by the end of next week, just like I’ve forgotten about…I can’t remember because I forgot it.)
And once again I find myself making a point I made in the wake of the October 7 pogrom: it’s not just the United States and its Western allies that experience “blowback” from their foreign interventions.
It’s an article of faith among left-wingers and foreign policy “realists” that American meddling in other countries’ affairs ends up rebounding against the United States in the form of terror attacks and the establishment of hostile regimes abroad. (The Iranian Revolution, supposedly set in motion decades earlier by the American- and British- backed coup of 1953, is said to be one example.)
Is there any validity to this argument? Probably. America does a lot of things that make people angry, whether it’s overthrowing governments or declaring economic war against its “friends.” (Yeah, we Canadians are still salty about that one.)
But I’d also argue that the blowback theory should be applied consistently.
Iran has its own recent history of interfering in other countries - Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, freaking Argentina - usually by way of proxy militias and terrorist organizations like Hezbollah. October 7 was an atrocity with Iran’s fingerprints all over it. And you can draw a straight line from the pogrom to Iran not having any semblance of a nuclear program, nor even control of its own skies, anymore.
Many people believe that only the United States, Israel and European democracies have any agency, and that everything wrong with the world is caused by either American action. (Or American inaction: the Venn Diagram for Brits who complain about the Yankees policing the world, and Brits complaining that the Americans didn’t join a war in Europe until after Pearl Harbor, is a circle.)
By contrast, Iran and Russia and China and other “axis of resistance” countries never instigate anything and only react when they’re attacked or threatened or provoked or criticized or told “no.” It’s not that Russia wants Ukraine, you see, it’s just something something NATO expansion blah blah sphere of influence blah blah.
Americans are accused of seeing the world in extremely America-centric terms, but even Trump doesn’t think the world revolves around the USA to the extent America’s harshest critics do.
Is there an Indianapolis sporting curse?
After Tyrese Haliburton’s sickening Achilles injury in game 7 of the NBA finals (which ESPN replayed so many times, I really thought they might put a window in the corner of the screen and just show it on an endless loop during the game) this has been making the rounds:
One of these things is not like the other, unless you’re really high on Anthony Richardson for some reason.
That said, the Circle City also had a World Hockey Association team, the Racers, with a young Wayne Gretzky on its roster…which folded midway through the league’s final season. (The Racers also had Mark Messier for a while, and on Earth 2.0 it’s Indianapolis and not Edmonton which dominated the eighties.)
And it hosted the 2005 United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the greatest shitshow in Formula One racing history, and yes, that includes the career of Nikita Mazepin.
The Colts drafted Jeff George first overall. ‘Nuff said. Two years later, they had the top two picks in the NFL draft and somehow whiffed on both of them.
Okay, Peyton Manning won a Super Bowl with the Colts. But imagine how many he might have won had Tom Brady not been in the league at the same time.
So, yeah, whoever made this meme might be on to something. Indy’s biggest hope at sporting glory might be Caitlin Clark, if she’s able to retain her eyesight.
Notice how no one ever says “the world would be so much more peaceful if it were run by women” since Clark joined the WNBA? I’m just saying.