Operation Epic Fury

It is a cautionary tale - the names we bequeath on our military operations.  Team USA chose "Operation Epic Fury".   Tehran merely responded with stalwart resolve.  Maybe we should have stuck with "Grandma's Blackberry Cobbler".

It started badly for us.  We managed to implode a school with little girls.  Most of the 165 girls who lost their lives were between the ages of 5-7 years.  How can I forget the image of an amputated and shredded lower arm?  The things which I cannot forget, and the things which I can never share will not find space on a blog.   But I began to search for the signal.  It came shortly after we also deprived a few adults with Down's Syndrome the right to return home when a cafe was struck where they were employed.   You don't want to see that one either.

The Office of the Seal of the Prophet put the word out.  A simple word which we could understand but scarcely grasp.

Compensation.   Diyah.   Blood Money.

Islamic law describes three types of bodily injury:  intentional, accidental, and intentional bodily harm which resembles accidental.  What happened to the girl's school at Minab is an interface of all three concepts.  Intentional harm involves an iron blade, something which can cut into flesh. A missile qualifies for the primitive description. The weight of wood and stones is also addressed. What we did may have been accidental in nature, but the fact that outdated geo-spatial intelligence was used for targeting shows a slip-shod quarterdeck. So in my mind, the case can be made for all three.

The Diyah is owed by the clan of the killer.  We would be that "clan".  Problematic is that we will bristle at negotiating terms of compensation using the correct jurisprudential terms. But if we are smart, we will approach it pragmatically.  The secondary problem is that Tehran is not talking to us directly and only through mediated channels.  I am not sure I can blame them.

Back in the day - the compensation for death (and redemption from death) was in camels.  And because it is Islam, the blood money for a woman is half the amount received for the death of a man.  In fact - for the male of the species compensation is broken down to loss of a penis or testes too.  The use of camels dates back to an event which happened prior to the birth of the prophet known as Muhammad.  But really, guys.  Our State Department needs to get to work on that issue and hammer out an agreeable compensation.  This is a beginning point.  They have asked for it.  Told us what they want.

Awakened this morning to the news of the assassination of Ali Larijani.  I used the word "we" when mentioning this in the prior post because Israel and the USA are equal shareholders in this operation.  But if this news is true,  we should dread what may occur in the next 24 hours.  Our troops outside the borders of Iran need be on a highest level of alert, as do staff at our embassy compounds.

Last time I checked, we are still bound by the Executive Order of President Gerald Ford.  We do not assassinate world leaders who represent their nations.   (EO 11905)  Yep.  We can assassinate a military general, but we cannot assassinate a head of state.  And this current model of decapitation of Iran's leadership merely means that we may scarcely know who we are actually dealing with now in a chain of command. It will become invisible to us.  

Let's turn this on its head for a moment.  If we awaken to our POTUS being assassinated tomorrow,  Pete Hegseth a few days later, and then a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the world has erased a red line.  Red lines exist for stability and political homeostasis.  We claim nuclear enrichment is a red line. But so is bad policy.

I have no real answers.  But America is weakened globally by our actions.

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