yeah sure, carpe diemcrats

I appreciate Matt Duss, in conversation with Jeet Heer on Heer’s podcast last week (before Saturday’s realized eventuality, the U.S. strike against Iran’s more fortified nuke plants), pushing back against Heer’s reproducing casually a tail-wags-dog account of the Israel-U.S. relation:

JH:And I think there might be other indications as well, uhm, that, like, the opposition to this war uh would be coming not just from you know the usual . . . chunk of the United States that, like, is not enthusiastic for war but, like, within the military-industrial, uh, side of things as well. Because, like, in a lot of ways . . . for the United States to get into a war with uh Iran right now, like, makes no sense! — and, like, you know, like, I would have to imagine that there are people, you know, . . . traditionally very, uh, centrist, hawkish type people, uh, who are perhaps less beholden to AIPAC than Chuck Schumer, who are like kind of actually worried, like, you know, like ‘What exactly is the United States doing?’

MD:No, I think that’s exactly right. And for good reason! We, we’ve run this play before! Um and this is part of what’s so baffling about this.

JH:Yeah! Yeah, no no, especially baffling — I mean I think maybe to underscore the you know national security side of things, or the uh American national interest side of things, I mean like, it seems to me that, like, Israel or at least Israel you know as Netanyahu conceives of it, . . . the Israeli government, the Israeli, you know, political point of view, is to get the United States involved with Iran — and like that kind of makes sense, like, if I were a small nation you know in this region . . . like, I would want like you know Big Brother to come in and do my fights for me.

But, like, if I were, like, the Big Brother, I would also think like I actually have like other interests rather than, than Israel. . . . Like I can kind of see like what Israel’s goals here are, and it’s not just stopping Iran’s nuclear program, right? Like because I mean like Netanyahu’s been talking, talking about regime change — and I think one should actually conceive that as uh regime smashing . . . . But they want, they want a, a civil war and a divided Iran . . .

MD:Yeah I mean uh it should go without saying . . . . Yes, he has a very specific vision of what, you know, security means for the state of Israel that is, you know, is inextricably um intertwined with his own political survival, um, and —

You know I would also add this: Even though, clearly, we are in this mess because he was able to convince and manipulate Donald Trump, because Donald Trump is very easily manipulable for people who know how to do it, ’cause he’s an ignorant and deeply emotionally damaged uh person — um, you know Putin was able to do the same thing — um, I do, I, I kind of, I don’t like when people are saying ‘Oh we’re — Israel is controlling U.S. foreign policy.’

No! I mean — we have gotten into this mess ourselves, we have a long history, there are people in this country, um, who believe that the best way to handle the Middle East is for us essentially to empower Israel as our local sheriff. Um, and it makes sense what, what Netanyahu is trying to do, as we see him like, attacking in Yemen, attacking Lebanon, attacking Syria, now attacking Iran, it’s not to you know collapse these states, it’s just to make them weak states that cannot challenge Israel and the U.S. in the region in any meaningful way. And I think the idea that this will lead to durable security and stability is a dangerous fantasy . . . .

I’d wish to see it expressed in rather stronger terms, with recognition of this U.S.-dominance relation’s roots in an earlier — and still quite recent! — condition, when the liberal-imperial center of gravity was with France and, above all, Britain, before Europe’s implosion of the first half of the last century. (Heer and Duss do at least identify Germany in its present European role, a bit further on in their discussion, as key party in the liberal-imperial configuration of our own moment.)

No principal political party of the U.S. as we know it is ever going to be ‘anti-war.’ (A warring world, indeed, is what we came about for in the first place.) But let the title’s fiction of ‘reclamation’ go. It’s a worthwhile listen.

[UPDATE (29 Jun. ’25): Heer’s subsequent episode (link below), David Klion as guest interlocutor, is a sort of round two of the general discussion, U.S. militarism and its domestic politics — likewise well worth listening to in my judgment.]