This time it was real. Let’s survey the wreckage and consider a way forward.
“1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure,” said the late Queen Elizabeth II in what may turn out, absurdly, to be her most well-remembered speech. “In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an ‘annus horribilis’.”
We may never know who this mystery correspondent was, but they coined an excellent term — which, as far as we can tell, is based on the more commonly known “annus mirabilis” (meaning “wonderful year” and describing years of remarkably good events). The Queen was praised for transparency: She was very cross indeed about a year filled with personal and public difficulties for the British royal family, including the breakdown of her children’s marriages and a vexing fire at Windsor Castle.
Since then, “annus horribilis” has been used here and there to describe times of misfortune, crises, or setbacks for an individual, organization, country or what have you. There are some claimants to the potential title of “annus horribilissimus” — the most horrible, which we might be coining here right now (though the Latin words have existed for some time). And the calendar year that began with Oct. 7, 2023 and ended this week is the winner, in my book.
Yom Kippur — the Day of Atonement — seems the right moment to examine that assessment.
I shall spare the reader the full exposition on the biblical massacre committed on Jews on that day, and the righteous fury that should descend on those who minimize, excuse or deny it. Or of the stupendous destruction that followed in Gaza, and of the regional mayhem that attached and still grows and may actually throw the U.S. election to Donald Trump. In my newsletter, Ask Questions Later, I’ve tried to go beyond the headlines, connect the dots in a useful way, and offer a concrete program for moving on from the current disaster in a positive way (read it here, and perhaps consider subscribing to receive access to more).
But on this Yom Kippuer, even as everyone awaits an Israeli strike on Iran after last week’s missile barrage on Israel, here are themes to consider, and the main highlights from a year of serious lowlights.
It’s time for the West to enact a paradigm shift on Iran and confront its oppressive and theocratic regime with clear demands to end support for terrorist groups around the Middle East, argued the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Robert Hamilton, a former US diplomat and defense official. Similarly, we argued that it is a mistake for the world community to leave the disaster in Lebanon as a problem for the hapless Lebanese or the unpredictable Israelis; it is a problem for the region and the world, and Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah creates an opening.
Meanwhile, there are those who are preparing for a change in Iran (which just fired some 200 ballistic missiles at Israel, as if that’s a normal thing). Reza Pahlavi, some of the last Shah, believes the regime is more brittle that it appears. In an interview from his base in Washington, D.C., he envisions a democratic, secular Iran in strategic alliance with the West and offers himself as a transitional leader. Clearly there will be skeptics; but name recognition has value and there will also be believers. For extra credit, read our retrospective on the 1953 CIA skullduggery that put has father on the throne.
It is a cliche to suggest we tend to fight yesterday’s wars — but we do it all the time. Right now, few are paying attention to the brittle situation in Jordan. Few, that is, except for the disruptive forces — and Iran again has its hand in the pie — that want the pro-Western and moderate monarchy to fall. Yemen’s radical and nihilistic Houthis — who have been unwisely tolerated by the West as they have trashed global maritime commerce over the past year — are also in the mix. If they should succeed, suddenly the world media will be talking about nothing else, and Israel’s longest border will be on fire.
Meanwhile, Israel’s annus was made that much more horribilis by the fact that it is led by Benjamin Netanyahu, perhaps the luckiest political general of all. It is hard to fathom any other leader of a democratic country surviving the debacle of Oct. 7, when his government was stupid enough to leave the Gaza border almost totally unguarded, despite ample intelligence warnings, because it was too busy guarding extremist settlers stirring up violence in the West Bank. Netanyahu is under constant suspicion (by most Israeli citizens, polls show) of trying to prolong the war in order to delay the reckoning, which is why he tries to scuttle his own Gaza cease-fire proposal. And as if to prove that his blindness is not just tactical but strategic, he has also scoffed at President Biden’s efforts to engineer a Sunni-Western-Israeli alliance arrayed against Iran (because it would require a peace process with the Palestinians as well). No elected leader on earth is worse for his country (not even Turkey’s vile Erdogan; not Poland’s Bibis who were mercifully defenestrated; and Putin’s not elected, though the media can seem confused).
Netanyahu’s not alone — in fact, he’s the reasonable face of his political camp. Throughout the year we have examined all sides of the national suicide being organized by the Israeli right wing (read all about it here), which goes far beyond quotidian events but has been cast into the spotlight by them. We have looked at the claims by the International Court of Justice that Israel is breaking the law in the West Bank (the claims are weak, but the settlement project is nuts) as well as the possible arrest warrants against its leaders from the International Criminal Court (again, the case is weak). But for an unfiltered look into the mind of those who would merrily march civilization off a cliff, see this debate with former spy Jonathan Pollard.
Few players have covered themselves in glory over the past year, and that includes those in the pro-Israel camp who have manifested a dispiriting degree of indifference toward the massive loss of life in Gaza. But for sheer bonehead factor, it’s hard to beat progressives in the West who not only sympathize with the Palestinians but also cheer on for Hamas, Islamist fanatics who would string the gays among them from whatever rafters remain standing in Gaza. Hamas for four decades has been fighting like hell to prevent a two-state solution, and Hamas is absolutely diabolical enough to purposely try to get Gazans killed because of political gain. On the other hand, mocking idealistic-yet-clueless students who cannot distinguish the river from the sea is too easy a target when the international media itself has been guilty of normalizing the abnormal as well. Jihadism has its many useful idiots — a fascinating new twist of the theory of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
