You Felt It Too?

I was up early on a call.  It was three in the morning, trying to triangulate the closure of a deal amidst the jarring disruption of, last minute contrarian stakeholders who all had opinions and titles when I scanned the news and caught sight of the fact that the number two official of a sovereign nation had just been assassinated in my name.  

Sinking feeling.  Perhaps you felt it too?  The way it felt when we invaded Iraq the first and second time.  They way sentient citizens must have all felt when I was a toddler and we carpet bombed North Vietnam and then Cambodia.  Powerless, in the moment, to stop these actions, we try to learn all we can, and consider other people’s grief and our own complicity.  

“A man with blood on his hands.”   “One of the bad guys” in the simplistic, kindergarten language that our officials often resort to.  But considering the crowds of Iranians, grief stricken and enraged, and the oddly familiar phase in Farsi: “Death to America” it is difficult not to empathize with the powerlessness anyone would feel when a another nation, not you, has the power to silently stalk and annihilate someone out of the sky with a drone.  These Qud Force murders, atrocities, many times with innocent civilians are wretched, as well.  It must be said.  But it does trike one that America’s remarkable power should always be handled with the utmost care so as not to turn the rest of the world against us or invite trouble we may one day be unable to repel.  And certainly me, myself and more than half the country have no faith whatsoever that this president of ours is thoughtful, methodical, or putting the nation’s interests before his own.  

A wailing suddenly, from within the house.  My older daughter comes down the stairs and heads off to my bedroom where my wife is still sleeping.  I doubt it has anything to do with Qasem Soleimani. People are yelling on my phone call and I put them on mute to head off to find out what my daughter is upset about.  She’s broken up with her boyfriend.  Bad timing.  She was supposed to head up to Toronto in the morning.  I tell her it’s just a quarrel and my wife waves me away with her hand.  I go back and try to focus on my call.  It’s 4:00AM and out the window its dark and quiet.

Friday, 01/03/20