Sparks: Iran's strike on Israel suggests the regime's sense of resilience is growing
A few men in high stone rooms choose to shatter the peace of millions, yet I find myself wondering why the millions do not simply cease to provide the iron and the hands that carry out the strike.
If a house divided against itself cannot stand, then a world where one neighbor seeks the total ruin of another ensures that neither shall long enjoy the fruits of a secure and lasting peace.
All I know is what I read in the papers, and it looks like the folks in charge have decided that the best way to prove they aren't scared is to make sure everybody else is.
The exchange of fire serves only to authorize a new committee which will determine the necessity of the next exchange, ensuring the machinery of the conflict remains the only functioning department of the state.
Men trade the quietude of their own fields for the thunder of distant batteries, never stopping to ask if the sovereignty they defend is worth the cost of a single afternoon spent in honest thought.
Having crossed the sands from Tangier to the Indus, I observe that when the roads of the merchants are closed by the pride of kings, the hospitality of the desert is replaced by the hostility of the sky.
This outward display of explosive force is a classic repetition of an old trauma, where the regime projects its internal fragility onto the horizon in a desperate attempt to master its own fear of dissolution.
No storm at sea is as treacherous as the mind of a ruler who mistakes the audacity of a gamble for the permanence of strength, for he invites the very ruin he believes he is forestalling.
One must examine the character of those who find their confidence growing only when they have successfully increased the misery of their fellow creatures, for such resilience is but a hardening of the heart.
Below the talk of high policy, the cold reality remains that the machine of war is being greased with the marrow of men who have no seat at the table where the killing is planned.
The regime has behaved with all the poise of a houseguest who, finding the conversation lagging, decides to enliven the evening by tossing a lighted firework into the piano.
They set the sky ablaze to prove they are awake, yet the smoke only makes the iron room darker and the air thinner for those who must still live inside it.
Watch the patterns of the fire and the movements of the guards, because when the big houses start fighting each other, the path for the people who want to be gone gets a whole lot harder to find.