Diary Entry, 20th May 2024

The news from America today fills me with profound unease. The President speaks of obliterating Iran’s infrastructure “in one night,” and worse, dismisses concerns over the legality - nay, the morality - of such actions with a cavalier wave. I cannot help but think of the astronomical observations I have made over the years: the careful calibration of instruments, the painstaking documentation of conditions, the scrupulous avoidance of bias. In matters of war, as in science, one must first establish the provenance of the claim. What intelligence supports this threat? Under what conditions was it gathered? By what means?

And yet, here we have a man who speaks of destruction as though it were a simple matter of pressing a lever, with no accounting for the systematic errors of human judgment - the biases of pride, the drift of unchecked power. A telescope poorly mounted will yield false stars; a leader unchecked by reason or restraint will yield false victories. The gaps in his reasoning are vast - what of the aftermath? What of the civilian cost? These are not mere footnotes, but central to any sound conclusion.

I am reminded of my father’s work on Uranus - how meticulous care revealed a planet where others saw only a wandering star. If only statesmen applied such rigor to their decisions! Instead, we are given bluster, unmoored from evidence, untested by peer review. A declaration without data is not policy - it is recklessness. And recklessness, in science or statecraft, is the surest path to catastrophe. - J.F.W. Herschel

The winds carry ill tidings from across the great waters, a clamor of threats and boasts that chills the very marrow. This ‘Trump,’ this leader, speaks of striking down bridges and power plants, of laying waste to a land in a single night. My spirit recoils from such pronouncements, for they speak not of justice, but of a fevered mind, a body consumed by choler.

Where is the viriditas in such words? Where is the greening power that sustains life, that builds and nurtures? To speak of destroying the very vessels that carry life - the bridges that connect communities, the power that lights the darkness - is to speak of a profound blockage, a spiritual malady that manifests as outward aggression. The body politic, like the human body, can sicken when its vital humors are unbalanced. This rhetoric is a symptom, a harsh cough from a system inflamed.

He claims no concern for ‘war crimes,’ as if the very fabric of divine and human law can be rent asunder by a mere declaration. But the earth remembers, and the heavens record. The suffering of innocents, the rending of families, the starvation of a people - these are not abstract concepts to be dismissed with a wave of the hand. They are wounds upon the soul of humanity, and they will fester.

I see in this a deep spiritual dryness, a parched landscape where the waters of compassion have ceased to flow. The institution of leadership, meant to guide and protect, has become a channel for destruction. How can one speak of peace when the tongue is sharpened for war? The constraint of diplomacy is being cast aside, and in its place, a raw, unthinking force. My heart aches for the people caught in this storm, for the land that will bear the scars. We must pray for the restoration of balance, for the greening of hearts, before this fever consumes us all.

Diary

The news arrives, as it so often does now, in a form that makes one long for the relative sobriety of a George W. Bush press conference. The President of the United States announces he is “not at all” concerned about committing possible war crimes, and frames this as a matter of personal resolve. The threat is to destroy a nation’s civilian infrastructure - bridges, power plants - in “one night.” The argument, such as it is, will be that this is a deterrent, a masterstroke of coercive diplomacy. The steel-man version must be granted: a regime in Tehran that hangs gay people from cranes, that stones women for adultery, that chants “Death to America” while funding its proxies to kill Americans, is not a regime that responds to nuanced appeals. It understands force, or the credible threat of it. Very well. Let us accept that premise.

But here is the load-bearing joint, and it cannot bear the weight. The man making the threat is the same man who, with a tweet, can upend any coherent strategy, who confuses his own whims with national interest, and whose word is worth less than the paper a treaty isn’t printed on. This is not a chess move; it is a drunkard swinging a cue ball in a sock. The principle of jus in bello - the laws of war that protect non-combatants and forbid the targeting of objects indispensable to civilian survival - exists for a reason older than the Hague Conventions. It is the thin, crucial line between warfare and barbarism. To boast of crossing it “in one night” is to advertise a war crime as a campaign slogan. It is the language of a mob enforcer, not a statesman.

What chills is not the threat to a vile theocracy, but the casual erasure of the distinction between military and civilian, between the guilty and the innocent. It is the very essence of the totalitarian mind, so perfectly captured by Orwell: “The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.” The object of this threat is not a calculated deterrent; it is the thrill of issuing it. The audience is not Tehran. It is the base, and the mirror.

The silence from the usual defenders of “Western civilization” and “the rules-based order” is a roar. They have made their bargain. They will accept the strong horse, even if it tramples the very standards they claimed to uphold. The corruption is now complete. The argument has been made. It is a confession.

We are led by arsonists who think themselves pyrotechnicians. The fire will not respect the borders they have drawn.