Ask not for whom the bell tolls

Yesterday the Empire claimed another life when unmanned drones launched their hell fire and wiped out the small party of warriors. Thousands of miles away the Empire’s leadership patted each other on their backs and toasted a job well done.

Those are not lines from The Empire Strikes back but rather a fictional news account of the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian Republican Guard Commander and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, leader of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces. To be clear, in the eyes of the United States, these were very bad men who, because of the war in which we engage, “deserved to die”. These were the leaders of some of the efforts to remove United States and European influence from the region and create a sphere of influence dominated by Iran as a Russian client state. To be equally clear, these deaths (and the deaths of hundreds of thousands) are the result of our investment of national treasure into a war machine and fossil fuels rather than diplomacy and sustainable lifestyles. Their deaths are not a cause for celebration but rather of mourning the lost opportunities and of wondering what form of revenge is being plotted in the meeting spaces of “our enemies”.

Back in the 60’s I studied a short verse that was penned by John Donne in the 1600’s. Many, many others have studied it also, but it seems few have learned from it.

No man is an island entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were,
As well as any manor of thy friend’s,
Or of thine own were.

Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.