"It's not meant to be happening here."
Louise Starkey, an Australian influencer in Dubai posted those words to the internet in response to Iranian missiles hitting the United Arab Emirates. The adverb says everything. Life is forever nice "here" because all the crimes we commit "there" are denied a response and whitewashed out of the news "here."
The phrase, which Starkey erased in response to a tsunami of indignant criticism, aptly sums up the dominant attitude in the Global North, where misfortune is happenstance and the organized brutality undergirding economic life merely makes for an "interesting proposition" in an academic seminar, if even that.
The "here" makes clear that there are places that can be bombarded, like Palestine and Venezuela, and other places no, like the United Arab Emirates, an oil and gas tax shelter for the fabulously wealthy. The fact that a missile can explode "here" shows that the rules are changing. The new reality to which all of us have fallen heir is that everywhere is subject to bombardment at a moment's notice. Not just "there," but everywhere.
What the influencer demonstrated was not ignorance but a sense of reality and a "common sense" grasped intuitively by everyone, but rarely articulated, and virtually never with such directness. But they are the same ingredients at work in the odd reaction of the majority of European governments to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, though each one has its particular nuance. German Prime Minister Friedrich Merz questioned international law and said "now is not the time to teach a lesson" to the United States. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer expressed doubts and declined to join in the U.S.-Israeli attacks. French President Emmanuel Macron suggested extending the French nuclear umbrella over Europe. But all three speak with one voice in saying that they would take "measures to defend our interests and those of our allies" in the face of Iran's "reckless attacks."
Amazing. The problem is "there" rather than "here." One would never guess that Israel and the U.S. started the current war; that the secular state the U.S. periodically claims Iran needs was already created by the Iranian people, but then overthrown by U.S. coup in 1953 after Iran had the nerve to nationalize its own oil; or that Iran was extremely accommodating in negotiations with the U.S. up to the final minute in February, making every effort to avoid war.
And what to make of president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, who demanded of Teheran a credible transition, a definitive termination of nuclear and ballistic programs, and an end to destabilizing activities in the region, just hours after the Iranian head of state had been assassinated by U.S.-Israeli air strikes?
Incredible.
Let's review some facts. Without provocation, and with complete contempt for Iranian sovereignty, the U.S. and Israel bombed the country, blaming Teheran for the attacks and denying it had any right to retaliate. This kind of framing makes Orwellian double-think seem quite rational, and it's certainly understandable that even the regime's critics are uniting behind the government's war effort. No matter how much Iranian women may need to be liberated, they can't sign on to an effort that blew up dozens of little girls attending elementary school in Minab on the first day of war.
In any case, much as we like to blame Trump for everything, we've seen this movie before. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 by the neo-cons Trump has so criticized had nothing to do with liberating the Iraqi people (Operation Iraqi Liberation was considered as a name for U.S. invasion policy, but the acronym OIL threatened insurmountable public relations problems), nor was it the done in a jiffy operation it was advertised as being. Weapons of mass destruction never turned up because they had never existed, which was obvious at the time.
Iraq was devastated almost beyond repair, which ended up enhancing Iranian influence in the region, ironically enough, given unrelenting U.S. hostility towards Iran since its revolution in 1979.
Unlike Trump today, President George W. Bush at least felt the need to send Colin Powell to the United Nations Security Council to make a case for war, because obtaining UN approval was considered important. Though Bush ended up settling for support from the likes of Tony Blair, Jose Maria Aznar, and Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, he looked hard for more. He ran into a dignified "No" in Berlin, Paris, and other capitals.
Flash forward a quarter century and Trump, without seeking any European support, has garnered quite a bit in spite of himself. Only Spain has refused the U.S. use of its airbases to attack Iran, which appears to be strengthening Prime Minister Sanchez with the electorate. He can use the help, as there are still plenty of Spanish "patriots" who support Trump. Meanwhile, the Danish social democrats, who rebounded in the polls after standing firm in the face of U.S. threats to Greenland, will vote soon. Let's hope they create some momentum for sanity in Europe, where it's in short supply.
After all, though it has dropped from the radar, the threat to Greenland has not gone away. The only reason it hasn't been attacked already is that Israel doesn't really care about it. But that could change, which Copenhagen seems to recognize, but not Brussels or Berlin. The latter still think that being "here" affords protection from the consequences of our actions "there." It doesn't.
In today's world, there is no more "here" and "there," only a shared everywhere. In that universal space economic relations are fragile, everyone is vulnerable, and mastering the technology of violence is not difficult.
We're all at risk here.
Source:
Beñat Zaldua, It Can Also Happen "Here", La Jornada (Spanish), March 7, 2026
