“To wage” war

The feudal lords of old, when they declared war on other feudal lords, would place chastity belts on their wives and ride off on horseback to wage war. Sometimes they returned, and sometimes they died on the battlefield, exclaiming that they would give their kingdom for a horse. Today's feudal lords are different. They don't place chastity belts on their wives, nor on their mistresses, but neither do they take the high-speed train to wage war. Today's feudal lords watch the war they've declared from afar, in their pajamas. From their offices, they order attacks, and their soldiers attack. When it's been going on for days, they become somewhat detached, or perhaps not; perhaps they follow it with the fury with which they would follow a football match: with rage if the enemy scores goals.

Today's feudal lord has attacked Iran, a country whose political regime disgusts and terrifies me because of the medieval fanaticism it practices. Medieval punishments, medieval alleyways, medieval transport and outfits Medieval. But by attacking Iran, what he's doing isn't protecting the civilian population, as the owner of that territory. He's provoking an escalation of suicide attacks that we'll soon see, causing the deaths of his own soldiers and, of course, Iranian civilians, and creating alliances and lukewarm or half-hearted reactions. Napoleon, at least, was in the camp. He gave orders from his tent while the cook asked him what he would eat, at least. He wasn't on the front lines, of course, but he was there, effusively greeting the so-called "cannon fodder," an expression that has lasted to this day—archaic, of course, because we no longer use cannons—and which is painfully graphic.

I won't forgive today's feudal lord for the indifference I'll feel in three months, a year, towards a war that will last a long time and will exterminate cannon fodder or drone fodder.