Celebration of Death

This morning I listened to the second press briefing by the former Fox News host and current U.S. Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. It was like listening to a giddy teenager describing his latest round of Call of Duty 2. It was cavalier, unserious—and horrifying.

In truth, I could only manage about five minutes before changing the station in disgust.

He said things like:

“They are toast and they know it.”

“We will fly all day and all night… death and destruction from the sky all day long.”

“We are punching them while they’re down.”

Then he compared the war to a football game.

Who talks like this? Someone who thinks it’s a game. Someone not fully tethered to the reality of the forces he is unleashing.

I found myself thinking: this is not strategy. It’s glorification. A celebration of death and destruction. The only other leaders I have heard speak in this register are the clerics and officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah—men who inhabit a world of religious martyrdom and apocalyptic rhetoric. They at least clothe it in solemnity. This was something else: swagger.

And then I thought of the reported 168 girls killed at a school in the initial bombing of the city of Minab on Saturday.

It’s often said that war develops a momentum of its own. Once the killing begins, perspective narrows. One coffin is a tragedy; hundreds become a statistic. The language shifts. It becomes a numbers game. That is why Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “To win without fighting is best.”

Instead, what we are seeing—and hearing—is a kind of techno-fascination with the spectacle of war, engineered for television. A belief that dazzling imagery and muscular rhetoric can pacify the public. Hypnotize us. Desensitize us.

As officials grasp for justifications—leaning on the old lie about imminent threats—they obscure the human toll. The terrible price that led the world, after World War II, to attempt something better: a system of rules meant to govern conflict and mitigate its consequences—mass migration, refugees, starvation, disease—the suffering of the defenseless and the vulnerable.

How easily we forget. How easily the world we worked so hard to build and maintain can begin to disintegrate before our very eyes.

Institutions that took generations to construct—laws forged from the ashes of catastrophe, alliances born of hard lessons, norms written in the memory of mass graves—prove far more fragile than we ever wanted to believe. 

The tragedy is not only in the lives lost. It is in the erosion of the guardrails that were meant to prevent those losses in the first place.

How easily we forget—and how costly that forgetting becomes.

Rubio Throws The Jews Under The Bus

My jaw dropped yesterday.

The U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, speaking to reporters after briefing congressional leaders on the attack on Iran, said the following:

“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

Read that carefully.

The United States struck Iran because Israel’s action would have triggered retaliation against American forces, effectively forcing Washington’s hand.

Rubio — one of the more conventional figures in an otherwise unconventional administration — was clearly reaching for a legal rationale: anticipatory self-defense. A pre-emptive strike to prevent imminent harm. That is the language of Article 51 of the UN Charter.

But in constructing that argument, he did something deeply irresponsible and dangerous.

He framed American military action as reactive to Israel’s decision-making. In doing so, he handed anti-Israel conspiracy theorists, and outright anti-Semites, a talking point that we've heard over and over again: U.S. foreign policy is dictated by Israel.

Now, I have little doubt that Netanyahu lobbied aggressively for a strike. He has long argued that Iran’s nuclear ambitions pose an existential threat to Israel, and he has been pressing Washington to “finish the job” they started last June. Trump — impulsive, glory-seeking, and drawn to performative displays of power — is obviously susceptible to appeals of cos-playing the military commander in chief. Add to that the intoxication of being the president who finally eliminated America’s long-time nemesis, Khamenei, a moment to rival Obama ordering the operation that killed Osama bin Laden.

But lobbying is not coercion. Advocacy is not control. And it is reckless for an American Secretary of State to blur that line in public.

The United States has no clear legal or moral justification for initiating a war with Iran. That, to my mind, is indisputable. 

Israel, however, can plausibly argue that a pre-emptive strike in self-defense is justified since it faces an imminent existential threat. 

The United States is in a categorically different position. Supporting an ally with intelligence, defensive systems, or materiel is one thing. Launching an offensive strike is another entirely. International law, and basic moral reasoning, recognize that distinction.

Which is why Rubio’s comment is so egregious. In a moment that demanded clarity and restraint, he reached for a thin legal veneer and, in the process, reinforced one of the most dangerous narratives in modern political discourse, putting Jews everywhere, especially in America, in peril.     

Intervention as a Moral Imperative

There’s a great deal of debate online about whether there was a moral imperative to remove the “evil” Ayatollah and his regime, even if the American-Israeli attack was clearly illegal under international law.

Legally, the case is weak. The UN Charter is explicit: the use of force is prohibited except in self-defense against an armed attack or when authorized by the UN Security Council. There was no imminent attack underway, nor a credible case of anticipatory self-defense under the narrow standards traditionally accepted in international law. “Regime change,” whether implicit or explicit, directly violates the foundational principle of state sovereignty — the core organizing rule of the post-1945 international system.

However uncomfortable it may be, even Iran retains the sovereign right to develop the means it believes necessary for its own defense. Many states possess advanced military capabilities without triggering preemptive war. The threshold for lawful force is intentionally high because the consequences of miscalculation are catastrophic.

I would argue that this attack represents the most damaging blow to the rules-based international system since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Ironically, it hands Putin rhetorical ammunition. When major powers circumvent international law in the name of security or morality, they weaken their own ability to condemn others for doing the same. This is why Canada's and Australia's support of the attack on Iran becomes problematic.

But what about the moral imperative? What about the argument that the Iranian people — who rose up in protest and were met with lethal force — needed outside help to be “liberated” from a brutal regime?

This is where the dilemma becomes far more serious. It places the bedrock principle of sovereignty in direct conflict with the moral impulse to prevent suffering. The doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (R2P), endorsed in 2005, was designed to address precisely this tension. It holds that when a state is unwilling or unable to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity, the international community has a responsibility to act.

But R2P was never intended to authorize unilateral regime change. It explicitly channels coercive force through collective mechanisms — primarily the UN Security Council. Without broad international consensus, intervention risks becoming indistinguishable from aggression cloaked in humanitarian language.

The real challenge is determining when the line has truly been crossed. “Evil” is not a legal category; it is a moral judgment. If powerful states can unilaterally define when another government is sufficiently immoral to justify war, then the prohibition on force collapses into subjectivity. Every great power believes its cause is righteous. That is precisely why the system was designed to remove unilateral moral conviction as a trigger for war.

We saw the difficulty of this balance during the Balkan wars of the 1990s — in Bosnia and Herzegovina and later in Kosovo. The international response evolved gradually: sanctions, peacekeeping, diplomacy, and eventually military intervention. Even then, especially in Kosovo, the action was described by some as “illegal but legitimate.” That phrase itself reveals the fragility of the order. When legitimacy drifts away from legality, the guardrails weaken.

History also forces us to confront another uncomfortable truth: externally imposed regime change often produces prolonged instability rather than liberation. Power vacuums invite factionalism. Regional actors intervene. Proxy conflicts proliferate. The moral clarity that justified intervention at the outset quickly dissolves into unintended consequences borne by civilians.

None of this diminishes the suffering of the Iranian people. It does not deny the brutality of their government. It simply recognizes that the method of response matters. Sanctions, diplomatic isolation, support for civil society, documentation of human rights abuses, and international legal accountability are slower and less dramatic tools — but they preserve the architecture of restraint that prevents global politics from devolving into open-ended power struggles.

Our instinct is to seek simple moral binaries — good versus evil, liberation versus tyranny. That works in the movies. In geopolitics, the landscape is far more complex. The road to hell is often paved with good intentions, and once force is unleashed it isn't neatly contained.

Putin implausibly framed his invasion of Ukraine as self-defense and protection. Most of us see it as imperial ambition. It becomes difficult to maintain moral clarity if other powerful states adopt similar language to justify actions that sidestep international law. The standard cannot be elastic depending on who is wielding power.

If the rules-based order is to mean anything, it must apply even when it is inconvenient, especially when it is inconvenient. Otherwise, “moral imperative” becomes not a principle, but a pretext.

And once that line is blurred, it is not only one regime or one region that suffers. It is the stability of the entire international system — a system that, however imperfect, has constrained great-power war for nearly eight decades, and is now being shredded, with reprecussions we have yet to fully understand.

Getting Real

There is a regional hot war throughout the Middle East, ignited by the American-Israeli attack on Iran that killed the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini and some 50 leaders of the Iranian war council. 

No one is shedding tears for the death of Khameini, except some Shia fanatics, and that is likely to be a dangerous problem in the coming weeks and months.

For those elated with the death of Khameini, let’s get real. Khameini was close to 90 years old. A succession plan was in place. His death is largely symbolic, and will be used as a rallying cry. The brutal, repressive infrastructure that has supported the Islamic Republic for the last almost 50 years did not rest on his frail shoulders.

Can we expect ‘the people’ to rise up spontaneously and suddenly to create a democracy in a place that has literally never had democracy in history. Only in trump’s addled delusional mind is that a thing. More likely, the IRGC will clamp down with more force, increased brutality and bloodshed.

The most Israel can hope for is internal factional struggle. Better that the Iranians point their guns at each other than at Israel. 

That’s a more medium term hope. In the meantime, as long as they can, Iran will continue to lob missiles at Israel and maybe even activate proxies and suicide bombers to wreak havoc abroad. A long term campaign of asymmetrical warfare is my biggest fear. 

Why is this happening now? Do the motives even matter? Probably not. But getting real, as I always try to do, I think the most cynical answers are the probably the right ones:

1. A war puts Netanyahu in the best position possible for the September election in Israel. 

2. A war distracts from trump’s Epstein problem. 

3. Trump is using the US military as a mercenary force, bought and paid for by the Sunni gulf states, who have put billions of dollars into his and his family’s pocket. 

4. Visions of greatness and legacy. It’s a gamble both trump and Netanyahu were willing to take for the sake of hubris. As trump said, no other American president would dare try it. Netanyahu has dreamed of defeating Iran his whole career. 

I will add a word about Iran’s response so far. From the point of view of ‘all out war’ it has been underwhelming and demonstrated, if anything, that it was not an imminent threat to Israel or America. That political justification has been proven categorically false or at least overstated. Netanyahu’s and trump’s brand of politics absolutely require an enemy in order to thrive. In trump’s case, turning to Iran served a purpose after ‘China will take over Greenland’ faltered.  

As I always do, I tend to consider big picture consequences, and there is nothing to celebrate. 

This is another indication of the collapse of the international rules-based order. It’s clear the US was negotiating with Iran over their nuclear program in bad faith - proving once again that they don’t believe in negotiation or diplomacy and can’t be trusted. It was a smokescreen. 

America’s choice of force means thousands of people will die. The world is a far less safe place today than it was last week or even last year. The nature of warfare has changed in a way that means asymmetrical violence and violence against soft targets will increase. 

Politicians Exploiting Athletes

Watching the Winter Olympics and the aftermath, two things have struck me.

First, since when did “Canada wins X medals”? Canada doesn’t win medals — Canadian athletes win medals. 

Aside from the sloppy grammar, it’s men and women who have devoted years of hard work and sacrifice who achieve success in their chosen sport. They happen to be citizens of the same country as me, and undoubtedly that has been beneficial and contributed in some small way to their success. They’ve likely received some level of taxpayer support (and often complain it isn’t enough — probably with justification). But a lucky coincidence of birth hardly entitles any Canadian to claim a share of an athlete’s victory. If, as they skate around the oval draped in the flag, we feel a connection or a sense of pride, that’s fine. It’s also, let’s admit, opportunistic on our part and largely unearned — not much different from feeling like a “winner” because the thoroughbred you bet on at the racetrack came in first.

Second, don’t athletes realize when they are being used by politicians? And if they do, don’t they care? This thought was prompted by the strange spectacle of the head of the FBI celebrating with the US men's hockey team in their dressing room after their overtime gold medal, followed by 20 out of 25  players attending trump’s snorer of a State of the Union address.

Once again, the gold-medal-winning US women's hockey team — who declined trump’s invitation — appeared to be the more sensible group. They appeared to understand that allowing themselves to be politically exploited could tarnish their achievement.

It’s interesting to consider what the women grasped that the men did not. In terms of the competition itself, the women’s gold feels earned in a way the men’s does not. The US women’s team was widely regarded as the best in the world and performed accordingly. The men’s team, by contrast, was significantly outplayed in the final and prevailed largely due to heroic goaltending and a bit of luck— not uncommon in high-level sport. You might expect such a victory to inspire humility. Instead, the opposite seemed true.

There are other differences as well. The men are highly paid professionals; the women are closer to true amateurs. Because they play largely for the love of the game, the women may have a clearer sense of what competing represents — not just personally, but for women’s hockey and for their role as public figures. 

For the men, the gold medal can appear more like another triumph to celebrate, another credential to display, and any association with powerful political figures simply part of the package. 

Perhaps the only honest stance, as fans, is to admire the display of athletic prowess and talent, without trying to own any part of it. To cheer without pretending we had anything to do with it, and be happy for the players without layering on any meaning or importance that isn't there. 

Ode To The PBT on ABC

Sometimes I get as nostalgic for more innocent times as the next guy. That’s what happened this past weekend, when I was feeling the midwinter blues and the YouTube algorithm—my digital security blanket—anticipated the remedy, as it so often does.

What popped up? A 1981 ABC broadcast of the Pro Bowlers Tour (PBT). It was the semifinals of the Rolaids Open—another matchup between the legendary Earl Anthony and his explosive rival Mark Roth.

It’s hard to overestimate the popularity of bowling when I was a kid. The “Golden Age” reached its peak in the 1960s, fueled by the invention of automatic pinsetters and the rise of televised professional tournaments.

Bowling culture was still going strong in the mid-’70s when I was a teenager. At its height, there were approximately 12,000 bowling centers in the U.S., and the American Bowling Congress boasted millions of dues-paying members. League participation hit its numerical peak in the 1978–79 season, with 9.8 million certified members.

It was a relatively affordable pastime. Weekly bowling leagues were a popular social activity—one of those bygone institutions that helped form the fabric of community cohesion across North America. Every household seemed to have a bowling ball. I can still picture the pink one my mother kept in her closet. I used to take it out just to look at it with fascination, feel its heaviness, stare at its magical swirling texture, as if it might tell me my fortune.

Then there were the tournament sponsors. They weren’t the multibillion-dollar white-collar multinationals that sponsor golf tournaments—companies like Royal Bank or Farmers Insurance. The PBT had mostly consumer-product sponsors: Rolaids, Wonder Bread, True Value Hardware, AMF (American Metal and Foundry), and the Miller Brewing Company. The sponsors themselves were a portrait of middle America.

And the tournament locations were places like Akron Ohio, Decatur Illinois, Rochester New York, and Florissant, Missouri.

How popular were PBT broadcasts, hosted by the inimitable Chris Schenkel on ABC? They were regularly watched by millions. In the mid-1970s, bowling telecasts held a 9.0 Nielsen rating—meaning roughly 9% of all U.S. households with a television were tuned in. On February 16, 1980, a record 22.7 million viewers watched the AMF MagicScore Open. During this era, bowling telecasts frequently outdrew major sporting events like the NCAA basketball semifinals and rounds of The Masters.

It must be said that bowling was largely a white man’s sport. I can’t recall a single Black pro on television at the time. Like many American sports associations, bowling has a regrettable history of racial and gender exclusion.

But back to Anthony versus Roth.

This wasn’t just a rivalry between the two best bowlers of their era—it was a clash of styles. Two men trying to achieve the exact same thing—knocking down ten pins—with completely opposite approaches.

Anthony was Mr. Smooth, the epitome of grace. Always well groomed and neat in appearance, in his glasses he looked more like an accountant than an athlete. His approach was economical, the ball light in his hands, his timing quick. From the moment he set his grip to the start of his delivery was mere seconds—barely any hesitation. His backswing was compact, and he launched the ball seemingly without effort. There was hardly any visible spin, but exactly the right amount.

Roth was completely different—the bull to Anthony’s matador. Slightly disheveled, physically more compact, and explosive in motion, he appeared to deliver the ball with every ounce of energy he possessed. His backswing soared high above his head, and the ball careened down the lane spinning like a centrifuge, teetering on the edge of the gutter before cutting violently into the pocket at the last instant with phenomenal force.

Watching it now, decades later, what struck me most was not just the skill, or even the nostalgia, but the unhurried intimacy of it all—the enthusiastic crowd, the absence of flashy graphics, the sense that this was a sport made for ordinary people with ordinary lives. Anthony and Roth seemed less like distant superstars than like two men you might recognize from your local grocery store. 

In a winter that can feel long and airless, the broadcast was a small time machine to an era when competition felt personal, communities felt tangible, and even a simple game could command the nation’s attention for an afternoon. For a couple of hours, at least, the world seemed narrower, calmer, and somehow kinder.

As I usually do when gripped by nostalgia I looked up what happened to Anthony and Roth. Roth, who is still the only right-handed bowler to ever convert a 7-10 split on national television, continued winning tournaments into the early 2000s. He died in 2021 at the age of 70 of pneumonia.

Earl Anthony's fate was not so blithe. In a sad bit of irony, the epitome of quiet grace on the lanes died tragically in 2001 from a head injury sustained when he fell down a flight of stairs at a friend's house. He was just 63 years old.    

God or the Blues

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE SONG

Mama read the Good Book

Papa paid his dues

Preacher preached Word

Sister swore it true

Me I always wondered

What I was gonna do

You know in this life 

You know you gotta choose 

Either god or the blues

Either god or the blues

Mama did her housework

Papa shined his shoes 

Preacher was the shepherd

Sister was his crew

Me I always wondered

What I was gonna do

You know in this life 

You know you gotta choose 

Either god or the blues

Either god or the blues

Mama praised the Church 

Papa cursed the Jews 

Preacher’s faith was stirred

Sister felt it too

Me I always wondered

What I was gonna do

You know in this life 

You know you gotta choose 

Either god or the blues

Either god or the blues

Mama gave a look

Papa drank his booze

Preacher said he'd heard

Sister spread the news

Me I always wondered

What I was gonna do

You know in this life 

You know you gotta choose 

Either god or the blues

Either god or the blues