Well, we have stumbled into what we used to know as the weekend. Welcome! Now, Saturdays represent not a break from daily labor, but a change in routine brought on by changes to programming time changes on the usual channels. The Friday evening shows are re-run on days like this, which adds to the usual disorientation.
The low-down stuff? Not routine, and in fact so daunting that the time (or channel) of the reporting on what has just-passed and what is-coming is a little immaterial. The recent past? New York, or actually the Jersey Shore got a quick shot of Earth’s energy with the 4/8 Richter scale eruption. It was a bit of a revelation, since there had not been one in that neighborhood in more than a century.
There was a fair amount of excitement on the Legacy Media about an event that lasted nearly a third of a minute. We were embarrassed as a group out on The Patio. The careers we followed had directed lodging in two distant and somewhat eccentric places subject to such seismic interruptions on a regular basis, and failed to even notice this relatively mild one.
We don’t know if there is anything on the schedule for today, which starts a little raw but mostly clear here in the Old Dominion. There is the likelihood of an Iranian response to the killing of senior IRGC personnel in Syria. The Israelis killed four or five of the senior leaders at a meeting with Hezbollah officials near their Consulate? Embassy? In Damascus, Syria, where part of the latest (and long lasting) segment of the social-religious war continues.
We had a ruminative chat about it, since there are some reflections in the event of the dramatic change in our global landscape. We recall having a little satisfaction when the announcements came about an earlier attack in January of 2020 next door in Iraq. In that one, an American drone carried a bomb that killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani near the Baghdad International Airport. Some of us were old enough to recall when that chapter in relations began back in 1979 with the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran, 45 years ago.
The Iranians who died in the current event would have been little boys back then, and we wish we could have pointed out that this is a sometimes painful business in which to embark. There was more past-present-future aspects to this. As noted, the Iranians say they will kill some other people in response, possibly today. The abrupt and anguished American departure from Iraq has resulted in the inadvertent death of a group of children, and the one in progress now involves the tragic demise of a group of aid workers from a mostly peaceful group known as “The World Central Kitchen.” They were trying to alleviate despair and instead found their own.
There is, of course, more to the story. The new wrinkle in unconventional warfare is the emergence of unmanned remote-control vehicles. These devices dramatically reduce risk and cost to attackers . It is a trend of considerable duration. The assassination of the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, one of five branches of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionarymilitary, was part of this cavalcade of combat chaos.
Latest reporting? Apparently the Iranians sent a note to the Foggy Bottom Bureaucrats warning them not to interfere. That is an event of similar magnitude to what will occur in our heavens on Monday. We are determined to maintain a peaceful presence here, but like everything else that is an evolving process.
We have a plan in place to defend any of the food trucks here in Arlington. We view this as a humanitarian issue, you know? We will accept to warnings from anyone on the matter!
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