Netanyahu’s ‘Imaginary War Narrative’ Strategy: ‘If It Works, Fine; if Not, No Big Deal. We’ll Try Something Else’
Of course, a victory narrative was too valuable to be foregone. Yet nonetheless, unexplained events matter.
On Saturday, an Israeli force of some 100 aircraft attacked Iran from a stand-off position in Iraq, some 70 kilometres outside the Iranian border.
A Wall Street Journal author, Walter Russell Meade, Distinguished Fellow at the Hudson Institute, wrote: “Israeli warplanes didn’t only cripple Iran’s air-defence systems and inflict painful blows on its missile-producing facilities. They also sent a message that Israel knows where Tehran’s strategic vulnerabilities are, and it can destroy them any time it wants”.
Russell Mead adduces from this reading his key point: “Military forces that have access to American military technology and intelligence-gathering capabilities can wipe the floor with militaries that rely on Moscow … American technology is the gold standard in the world of defence – even more so for a country such as Israel that has significant intelligence and technological capabilities”.
The western ‘war of imagined, created reality’ thus reaches out beyond Ukraine – to arrive in Iran.
The Narrative – U.S. tech and its Intel as ‘invincible – must be maintained. To heck with the facts. There is too much at stake to forsake it for truthfulness.
A more sober and experienced observer however, notes after four days examination, that, succinctly put:
“The IAF strikes seem to have produced minimal results; it appears however that covert operatives within Iran achieved several [inconsequential] drone hits. The Israelis launched a lot of missiles [some 56] – all from maximum stand-off distance. Iran put up a LOT of air defence missiles. There are no firm reports, nor video evidence (so far) of big ballistic missile strikes on any significant Iranian targets. The Iranians say they intercepted most of the attacking missiles, but admit some got through”.
As usual, the ‘imaginary war narrative’ being broadcast is completely detached from that which can be observed from ground imagery. Russell Meade effectively was demanding the pretence that ‘we not notice’ that Israel’s attack failed – that it did not cripple air defences, nor did it devastate any significant target.
Yet, as Professor Brian Klaas writes, “the world doesn’t work as we pretend [or imagine] it does. Too often, we are led to believe it is a structured, ordered system defined by clear rules and patterns. This is the meme at the crux of the Rules Order narrative. The economy, apparently, runs on supply-and-demand curves. Politics is a science. Even human beliefs can be charted, plotted, graphed – and by using the right regression and enough data, understand even the most baffling elements of the human condition”. It is a stripped-down, storybook version of reality
Though some scholars in the 19th century believed there were laws governing human behaviour, social science was swiftly disabused of the not
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
