I don’t know if you know what a ‘situationship’ is. A situation, we could say. That label that has become fashionable to call a romantic relationship to which we still do not want to give that status. An emotional limbo. We’re already seeing it. A ‘situationship’ is the alibi for not recognizing any commitment. Sometimes one part of the couple wants to call it a relationship and the other is still stuck in the situation. The forbidden question among the members of a ‘situationship’ is “What are we?”
It is also the uncomfortable question in this war in Iran that one of its members still does not want to officially call war. Is it soon after 12 days of relationship… based on bombings? Tonight, 12 nights already, the US claims to have attacked 16 Iranian ships with mines near an oil route; Iran has launched missiles at Israel; A drone has hit a US diplomatic facility. And almost 700,000 people have had to leave their homes in Lebanon. But don’t call it war. The US Government says it is an ‘operation’. Full of special nights.
It’s not a war, it’s a chance encounter. It includes the assassination of an ayatollah, the torpedoing of warships, the blowing up of infrastructure, the exchange of drones and missiles flying across borders; eight American soldiers killed and more than a thousand Iranian civilians, including 175 girls in the bombing of a school on the first day of war. But don’t call it war. Let’s not rush.
Calling war war, just as calling a relationship ‘relationship’, requires commitment. And the world order may be crumbling, but language still matters. Officially it is not a war because, according to the US Constitution, only Congress can declare it. And no one has asked Congress.
It is not only a legal issue, but also an emotional alibi. Since we don’t call it war, we don’t have to declare it. It is curious that war and love need that same verb: to declare themselves.
Moral?
No matter how much they call it an operation
It is a war, and we do not know its dimension
