Within the span of a week, what was begun by Israel on June 13 could easily be a replay of Sept. 12, 1683 when Poland's Winged Hussars, as led by King Jan Sobieski III, broke the siege of Vienna and saved Central Europe from Ottoman subjugation.
Israel is about to put an end to more than forty-five years of regional and worldwide state-sponsored terrorism by Iran's theocrats, although the very people whom Israel saves are unlikely to thank them for it. Israel's role is in fact similar to margraves, voyevodes, and similar border lords who, often at high costs to themselves, defended the ungrateful civilizations behind them from the barbarians and savages in front of them. We are, quite frankly, watching history in the making.
A Margrave's Lot is Not a Happy One
Science fiction writer Poul Anderson's "Among Thieves" is highly instructive. It is set in the distant future, with an on-and-off "forever war" between the planets Norstad and Osterik (the first is reminiscent of Germany, and Osterreich is Austria) and Kolresh, a space-faring nation of what are essentially pirates and terrorists. Neither can really get at the other because the first side cannot match the other in space, while the second cannot match the first's army.
Iran has similarly been a state sponsor of terrorism for more than forty years, while Israel has fought terrorists even before it became a country; hence the relevance of this discussion.
We can easily imagine ayatollah-ruled Iran as Mother Jihad, similar to Mother Ginger in the Nutcracker except she has terrorists instead of ballet dancers under her voluminous skirt.
That comes to an end as of this week.
In Anderson's story, the Margrave of Drakenstane — draken is Swedish for dragon, and stane is Old English for stone — pretends to collude with Kolresh to invade Earth and its associates, who have done very little to protect the frontier or "march" regions. Margrave means, in fact, Mark-Graf or border lord. His own people berate him for siding with the enemies they have fought for generations, and throw stones at their own soldiers when they board the enemy troop transports and accompanying warships to attack Earth.
However, at an appointed time, the Drakenstane officers order their men to attack the crews of the "allied" warships and transports. They know they will die if they fail to capture the ships, and many do, but now the Kolresh fleet is in the hands of Norstad and Osterik, and the forever war is over. The pirates and terrorists are disarmed and will never menace civilization again, but the Margrave says in essence "Don't bother to thank us" because he doubts the decadent inhabitants of Earth, who have been hiding behind his own people for decades — much as a good part of the civilized world has hidden behind Israel — will do so.
Israel will similarly put an end to the puppet master behind the Houthi pirates, Hezbollah terrorists who murdered U.S. Marines in Beirut, Hamas, Instagram moderators who work side jobs for the ayatollahs, and many domestic enablers of the terrorists in question.
I doubt Israel will get much in the way of thanks either, except from the Persian people themselves.
Margraves and Voyevodes; the Uniforms that Guard Us While We Sleep
Anderson appears to have modeled his Margrave on very real people who held similar roles throughout history. These warlords all had the duty of defending the civilizations behind them against barbarians, robbers, and enemy countries like the Ottoman Empire.
Austria's Grenzers (border guards) performed this function against the Ottomans, and the United States' own history includes many people whose job was to protect settlements from hostile natives, hostile foreign countries, bandits, and outlaws.
Margrave was originally the medieval title for the military commander assigned to maintain the defence of one of the border provinces of the Holy Roman Empire or a kingdom.
In England, a "marcher lord" guarded the frontier between Wales and Britain. Scotland and England both had a "Lord Warden of the Marches" who were responsible for dealing with criminal activity in the border region. The voyevodes of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had similar responsibilities on the Crimean and Turkish frontiers, and it is telling that voyna is the Slavic word for war.
Margraves, march-wardens, and voyevodes were all what Rudyard Kipling depicted as the "uniforms that guard you while you sleep," and he pointed out that the soldiers who protected England were not well treated either.
Make no mistake; Israel is now the Margrave of civilized humanity, and the IDF's personnel are now the uniforms that guard us all while we sleep.
We sit, quartered comfortably and safe out here, with two oceans between us and the terrorists, while some Israelis have about thirty seconds to reach bomb shelters when Hamas launches rockets. Students and faculty at our colleges, most of whom would be raped and/or killed if they fell into Hamas' or Iran's hands, bleat when Israel defends its own people. A Margrave's lot is indeed not a happy one, but now the forever war and cycle of violence between Israel and the terrorists needs to come to an end.
Persians Must Topple the Ayatollahs
Everybody knows that, if one lets even a handful of cancer cells survive, the cancer will eventually return. It is not enough for Israel to disable Iran's nuclear program. As Israel has already disrupted Iran's military forces, this is the best time for the Persian people to take their country back from the medieval savages who hijacked it in 1979.
Israel's name for its operation, Rising Lion, might in fact relate not to Israel's Lion of Judah, but rather the Lion and Sun on the pre-1979 Iranian Flag. Reza Pahlavi has urged his people to rise up and depose the ayatollahs.
The jailers and torturers at Evin Prison, about which Amnesty International actually has something worthwhile to say, should take note of the following:
During the Second World War, Americans liberated the Dachau concentration camp. The Americans and some of the inmates put the guards up against the nearest convenient wall and shot them. The fate of Benito Mussolini, at the hands of his own people, meanwhile speaks for itself. Evin's jailers and torturers should therefore unlock all the cells, leave the prisoners with the best available food and clothing, and decamp quickly to somewhere like Russia, Communist China, or North Korea before they get similar treatment from their victims and the victims' families.
The same goes for the ayatollahs, religious judges, and police who have tortured, raped, and/or executed women for not wearing hijabs and hanged LGBT people and Baha'is. They need look no further than the Nuremberg defendants who were fitted with Pierrepoint neckties for similar crimes against humanity. That's Pierrepoint, not Pierrepont; the extra 'i' makes all the difference between a fashionable garment and a broken neck, as in the Danny Deever treatment. Some have already seen the handwriting on the wall, and are fleeing the country.
When the ayatollahs go down, expect to see major changes throughout the world. The Houthi pirates, who produce nothing themselves, should dry up and blow away in the absence of their Iranian sugar daddies. The same might happen to Hezbollah and Hamas, which are totally dependent on foreign aid.
The same goes for many organizations that are causing trouble in our universities and on our streets — no Iranian oil money, no rioting or vandalism. Meanwhile, although the stock market fell on June 13 when Israel attacked Iran, I expect it to go up quickly once investors realize the Houthi pirates will be out of the picture and Iran will no longer be sponsoring violence around the world.
Civis Americanus is the pen name of a contributor who remembers the lessons of history, and wants to ensure that our country never needs to learn those lessons again the hard way. He or she is remaining anonymous due to being subjected to "cancel culture" for denouncing Black Lives Matter's incitement of civil disorder.
Image: Wikimedia Commons, via Picryl // public domain