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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   15909 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026

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A tiny note on the war

In the previous thread, I got some pushback for suggesting that not only did the US strike the Iranian school in Minab, killing 170 children or something like that, but perhaps it did so intentionally (or at least without remorse for the possible consequences of erroneous targeting). I admit that wasn't fully sincere. I realize that, even morals aside, there is no perceived military value in bombing children, at least not for the US (I do think Israelis may target children of IRGC officers out of their usual Bronze Age blood feud sentiment, Oct 7, Gaza and all, seen enough of their remarks to this effect; but then again they don't operate Tomahawks).

Well now the question on it having been an American strike appears settled. As for the intent – it's not so straightforward:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has gutted the Pentagon oversight offices that would have investigated the recent strike on an Iranian girls’ school — a move that has degraded America’s ability to protect civilians amid its largest air campaign in decades.
The Pentagon chief last year slashed offices that didn’t contribute to his goal of “lethality,” including the group that assists in limiting risk to civilians, known as the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. Around 200 employees who worked on the issue, including at that office, have been reduced by about 90 percent, according to two current and former officials and a person familiar with the effort. The team that handles civilian casualties at Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, has dropped from 10 to one.
Hegseth can’t close the offices because they are approved by Congress. But he has managed to make them nearly inoperable, according to the people, as the Pentagon investigates its responsibility in what could be the worst U.S.-led killing of civilians since 2003. Iranian state media said the strike killed about 170 children and 14 teachers.
“The fact that our secretary of Defense, that our Central Command commander, cannot actually tell us whether or not they dropped a bomb in this location, that is so unbelievably unacceptable,” said Wes Bryant, the Pentagon’s former chief of civilian harm assessments until last year. “It just points even more to recklessness in this, in the entire planning and execution of this campaign, the fact that they don’t have any idea.”

Does it matter if there was no intent if the United States, as of now, also has a revealed preference to not bother with minimizing such risks, in favor of «lethality» and some zany Judeo-Christian nationalism courtesy the power-tripping macho TV host Pete Hegseth? I believe it does, but marginally; about as much as those girls matter to Lethal Pete. I rest my case.

More to the point. It's remarkable that there's so little discussion of contemporary historical events on here. I won't criticize anyone, be the change you want etc.; but what we are seeing is pretty astonishing from the culture war standpoint. Could someone like Pete be imaginable as the Secretary of War – no, Defense – in 2023? 2019, even? 2016? It looks as if the politically dominant culture of the United States changed overnight. Does everyone just like it too much to find the change worth commenting on?

The Sardaukar flattened a sietch school in the Minab basin. Around 170 children. Fourteen teachers. The Imperial War Minister, a former propaganda broadcaster named Hegseth who was elevated for his enthusiasm rather than his competence, had already dissolved the civilian targeting review offices on the grounds that they impeded "lethality." The teams that once verified whether a strike coordinate was a Fremen armory or a children's learning hall have been cut from ten analysts to one. The War Minister cannot confirm whether Imperial ordnance hit the site. He does not appear troubled by this.

The Great Convention technically still prohibits such things. The Emperor has not repealed it. He has simply made the enforcement apparatus inoperable. The offices exist on paper. The staff are gone. The distinction between policy and practice has collapsed, and what remains is a revealed preference: Fremen casualties are not a cost worth tracking.

Now the spice has stopped flowing.

The Fremen have closed the Gap, the single passage through which all spice must transit to reach the greater Imperium. Traffic through the Gap has dropped from two dozen haulers a day to nearly zero. The few vessels still moving fly Fremen colors, running spice to their sole remaining trade partner. Over two hundred haulers sit stranded outside the passage, their captains unwilling to risk transit. The Emperor told them to "show some guts" and push through. They have not.

The consequences are cascading exactly as the Fremen intended. The great spice processors of the Gulf, the Saudis, Emiratis, Qataris, Kuwaitis, have been forced to cut production because they have nowhere to send it. Their storage is filling. Qatar's processing facilities went offline entirely after Fremen drone strikes, taking a fifth of the Imperium's refined spice-gas off the market in a single day. European and Asian spice-gas prices have surged over sixty percent in a week. The Spacing Guild, which cares about nothing except the flow, is reportedly preparing the largest emergency spice reserve release in its history. This is an implicit admission that the situation is not resolving.

Meanwhile the Fremen themselves continue to export. Their shadow fleet, old tankers running dark through routes the Empire cannot or will not interdict, has pushed nearly twelve million barrels through the Gap since the war began. All of it bound for the one great power willing to buy. China consumes Fremen spice at a discount and asks no questions about provenance. The Emperor's "maximum pressure" campaign to drive Fremen spice exports to zero has achieved the opposite. It has driven everyone else's exports to zero while the Fremen keep shipping.

Here is what the Landsraad does not discuss, though it is the central fact of the conflict: the Harkonnens do not serve the Emperor. The Emperor serves the Harkonnens. This is the inversion that makes the war intelligible. House Harkonnen maintains the siege of the southern sietches with Bronze Age enthusiasm, collective punishment, infrastructure destruction, open talk of blood debts and generational vengeance, and the Imperial court supplies the ordnance and the diplomatic cover and calls this arrangement an alliance. The Harkonnens have learned that the Emperor's domestic politics are such that no request will be refused. Every appropriation is approved. Every escalation is backstopped. Every atrocity is framed as self-defense. The tail has learned to wag the beast, and the beast does not notice because the tail speaks the language of the court. The Harkonnens sit in the Landsraad chamber and receive standing ovations while the southern sietches burn.

The Emperor believes this arrangement serves Imperial interests. The Fremen know otherwise. Every flattened sietch is a recruitment office. Every dead child has a father in the fedaykin or a cousin in the deep desert resistance or a neighbor who was neutral until yesterday. The Fremen do not need to match the Sardaukar in firepower. They need the Empire to keep making their argument for them. The Harkonnens are, in this sense, the Fremen's greatest strategic asset, though neither party would frame it so.

This is strategically suicidal and every student of desert warfare knows it. The Fremen do not need to breach the Shield Wall. They need only to hold the Gap closed and wait. The Empire's dependency does the rest.

This is how empires built on spice dependency collapse. Not from military defeat. From the moment the people sitting on the spice decide the passage is closed. The Emperor can flatten every sietch on Arrakis and it will not reopen the Gap. Only negotiation can do that. Negotiation requires acknowledging that the Fremen have something the Empire cannot take by force.

It is also remarkable how quickly the Imperial court changed, and how few among the Landsraad find it worth commenting upon.

Every dead child has a father in the fedaykin or a cousin in the deep desert resistance or a neighbor who was neutral until yesterday. The Fremen do not need to match the Sardaukar in firepower. They need the Empire to keep making their argument for them.

I'd imagine the Fremen made a few enemies with their own even less targeting bombings. This is not a sustainable path to emancipation, just the spread of chaos, a festering wound that longs to kill its host for daring to apply stinging ointment.

That said, in this analogy arrakis produces only a small fraction of the world’s spice.

That was always the dumbest part of Dune though, wasn't it?

Certainly Iran itself only around 4%, but around 20% transits the Strait of Hormuz.

I suspect if you included land part of the Achaemenid Persian Empire you'd get around 25% of production.

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