US Strikes Iran, Drones Hit Kuwait In Escalating Regional Conflict

Well, they announced a new round of military engagements in the Middle East, which I suppose makes sense if you don’t think about it too long, which is probably the idea. It appears the United States has decided to bomb some Iranian military sites, and in the same breath, Kuwait found itself caught in the crossfire of drones and missiles. It is a curious thing that when the big boys in Washington decide to tidy up their diplomatic mess, they tend to use firecrackers the size of buildings, and they rarely check to see if their neighbors are sitting on the porch.

I have always believed that a man who can explain a complex geopolitical strategy to a steer is a man who understands it. If you cannot explain why we are bombing Iran to a fellow who is worried about the price of hay, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. The official line, of course, is that this is about stability. It is a word that has become rather elastic in Washington. It stretches to cover everything from a quiet Tuesday to a Tuesday where the sky is full of things that go boom. The diplomats say these actions are precise, surgical, and necessary. I suppose that is true, in the same way that a sledgehammer is precise when you are trying to crack a walnut, provided you do not mind the mess and the fact that you have lost your thumb.

The interesting part of this particular dance is the geography. We are hitting targets in Iran, which is thousands of miles away, and yet Kuwait, a nation that has done nothing to offend us except to be in the neighborhood, is getting hit by stray fire. It reminds me of the time I tried to swat a fly in the parlor and ended up knocking over the grandfather clock. The fly was dead, certainly, but the clock was broken, and the family was angry. The politicians in Washington seem to operate under the assumption that distance is a moral buffer. If the explosion happens far enough away, it is not really an explosion; it is a “kinetic engagement.” If it happens close to home, it is a tragedy. But to the folks in Kuwait, a missile is a missile, whether it was aimed at them or merely lost its way on the way to Tehran.

Both sides in this conflict are playing a game of chicken with the steering wheel locked. Iran says they will retaliate, and the United States says it will defend its interests. It is a conversation that has been going on for decades, and the script has not changed much. The only difference is that the actors have gotten older and the props have gotten more expensive. The American public is asked to trust that this escalation will lead to de-escalation. It is a bit like asking a man to jump off a cliff because he believes the bird he is chasing will fly away. The bird might fly away, but the man will still hit the ground.

The stakes, as the experts call them, are high. Regional stability is at risk. That is a polite way of saying that the oil prices might go up, and the insurance premiums for shipping companies will skyrocket. But for the ordinary citizen, the stakes are simpler. The stakes are that we are spending money we do not have to fight wars we do not understand, in countries we cannot pronounce, for reasons that are explained in language designed to prevent us from understanding them. The government says it is protecting our security. I am not sure that security is something you can buy with a missile. Security is something you build with good fences and good neighbors. Bombing your neighbor’s barn does not make your own fence stronger; it just makes your neighbor want to burn yours down.

There is a bipartisan comfort in this chaos. The politicians on the left worry about the humanitarian cost, and the politicians on the right worry about the strategic weakness. But both sides agree that the solution is more force. It is a strange logic. It is like treating a fever by turning up the thermostat. The patient might sweat, but he will not get better. The folks back home are not asking for a lecture on international relations. They are asking why the man in the White House seems to think that throwing rocks at a problem is a substitute for picking them up.

I am not suggesting that we should ignore threats. A cowboy knows that sometimes you have to draw your gun. But you do not draw your gun because you are bored, and you do not draw it because you want to show off how fast your hand is. You draw it when you have no other choice. And even then, you aim carefully. The reports suggest that the aim in this instance was less than perfect, given the collateral damage in Kuwait. It raises the question of whether the people making these decisions have ever had to live with the consequences of a missed shot. They have not. They live in a world where a mistake is a press release, not a crater.

The shrug is not indifference. It is the recognition that this is exactly what we should expect from a system that rewards complexity and punishes clarity. The more complicated the explanation, the less likely it is to be true. If the strategy required a map, a compass, and a degree in international law to understand, it is probably a bad strategy. A good strategy is one you can explain to your grandmother. If she asks, “But why are we hitting Kuwait?” and you cannot answer her without using words like “asymmetric warfare” or “deterrence calculus,” then you have lost the argument.

In the end, the people of Kuwait are left picking up the pieces, the people of Iran are left angry, and the people of the United States are left wondering why their gas prices are rising. The politicians are left with their speeches, which are as useful as a screen door on a submarine. We are all just waiting for the next headline, hoping it will be less loud than the last one. But history suggests that the volume only goes up. The smart money is on the folks who stay home, keep their heads down, and remember that the men in charge are not gods. They are just men, and they are just as likely to miss the target as anyone else. The only difference is that when they miss, they call it a success.