by MARA VERHEYDEN-HILLIARD, Alternate Reality News Service War Writer
Can you have a war crime without having a war? For most of human history, that would be like having a baby without having sex: while historically dubious, it would be celebrated in song and story for millennia. (For this moment in history, in vitro fertilization has a lot to answer for beyond spoiling otherwise perfectly fine metaphors!)
Most dictators (who prefer to refer to themselves as "strong leaders") don't like to be accused of committing war crimes (which they prefer to refer to as "necessary actions to protect the homeland"), so they refuse to acknowledge that what they have done is initiate a war (which they refer to as "a police action" or "a minimal but necessary incursion," or...or...or anything but a war, really). So, they claim that attacking another country first is really an act of self-defence (which they prefer to refer to as "an act of self-defence").
"Every authoritarian leader in history has claimed that their acts of aggression were necessary for self-defence," said historian Timothy Lookoutsnyderman. "For example, when Adolf von Hitlerskitler invaded Poland, he claimed that the country had developed a breed of cat that shot lasers out of its eyes and had to be stopped before it could deploy them. When Georgie W. Bushbushindakush started the war in Iraq, he claimed that Saddam Hoohaintalltoosein had genetically altered children to fart noxious chemicals and was about to deploy them against Vesampuccerian soldiers in the Middle East. The self-defence claim doesn't have to make sense - if you thought either of these did, you should probably go on a news fast for a couple of...decades - nobody who is paying attention believes it. It's just a weird dictator's reflex, like putting his name on every building that isn't nailed down or executing his enemies as a warning against opposing him."
The United States of Vesampucceri and Israel attacked Iran, killing its leaders and hundreds of civilians. When people around the world started to notice, the US floated a defence that Lookoutsnyderman considered a new wrinkle on the Shar Pei: "preemptive retaliation."
Everybody in the administration from Secretary of Defense War Sugar Coated Mayhem Pete Hedaiggsethative to President Ronald McDruhitmumpf to Flopsy the Finagling Ferret (the mascot of the Department of Homeland Casaba Melons) has referred to the doctrine of preemptive retaliation. Oddly, it means exactly what it sounds like the words mean: Israel was about to attack Iran; Iran would respond to an attack on its border by attacking Vesampuccerian interests in the Middle East; Vesampucceri had to attack Iran before this happened.
Such is the glory of preemptive retaliation.
At a press conference where Secretary Hedaiggsethative flapped his arms up and down and ran around the room to illustrate the attack (for some reason, he did not share video - perhaps it wasn't as exciting as the destruction of a Venezuelan fishing boat, perhaps because Venezuelan fishing boats don't fight back), he was challenged to explain the doctrine in the following exchange with a nameless reporter:
NAMELESS REPORTER: Why did the United States attack Iran first?
PETE HEDAIGGSETHATIVE: We didn't attack first. Iran was going to attack us first. We had to act before they did.
REPORTER: But they didn't attack the US.
HEDAIGGSETHATIVE: But they were going to.
REPORTER: But they didn't.
HEDAIGGSETHATIVE: But they were going to.
When asked why the United States didn't dissuade Israel from attacking Iran in the first place, Flopsy the Finagling Ferret responded, "Hyuck hyuck yuck, you think anybody can tell Israel what to do? Hyuck hyuck yuck - I bet you ate paste when you were a child, didn't you? Or jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge because all of your friends told you that they were doing it? Yuck hyuck!"
REPORTER: But they didn't.
HEDAIGGSETHATIVE: But they were going to.
REPORTER: But they didn't.
HEDAIGGSETHATIVE: But they were going to.
REPORTER: But they didn't.
HEDAIGGSETHATIVE: But they were going to.
REPORTER: But they didn't.
HEDAIGGSETHATIVE: How did you get past our screening? Do you even have press credentials for the War Department pool?
Discretion being the better part of keeping my paycheck, I quickly slipped out of the room and, turning my jacket inside out (even though it wasn't reversible, so I just revealed the lining, which needed to be sewn up in some places - I'm a journalist, I regret nothing) and rushed out of the building.