February 28, 2026—The BBC reported a heart-wrenching social-media message from an Iranian in the wake of the US-Israeli attack on Iran:

“If I die, don’t forget that we exist too – those of us who oppose any military attack, those of us who will become just a number in reports of the dead.”

Unfortunately, the ordinary people will be forgotten and their deaths will just be numbers. That’s the way this always works. The trouble-makers are the villains or heroes whose stories are told in history books. The people who suffer the most are just afterthoughts.

Exceptions to this law of the world are rare.

It’s almost as if this war isn’t between Ayatollahs and Presidents and Prime Ministers. It’s almost like this war—like many others—mask a hidden alliance between the leaders against their respective peoples.

Almost.

I don’t deny that there are issues between the countries in this war (like other wars). But who created the issues? Ordinary Iranians and Americans and Israelis just want to raise their children and live good lives. Ordinary Iranians and Americans and Israelis live side by side in my neighborhood in Chicago without murdering each other. They may get incensed by the propaganda, but they go about their lives peacefully.

It’s the people seeking power and who have power who have created the issues. These are the same folks who “make history” over the bodies of their people.

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This is the strong-leader idea that Donald Trump is so enthralled with. (The Iranian and Israeli leaders have their own versions of this, but I want to focus on Trump.) But maybe a different view of it.

Trump has been enamored with Putin and Kim Jong Un and Victor Orban. They are his role models. But he carries it further than admiration. He is adopting their methods in controlling his own people—with troops on the street. Strongman versus the people. And when he wants to go to war, he goes after the strongmen: El Mencho of the drug cartels, Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. No doubt he is scoping out the options in Greenland and Cuba and Canada.

What if these countries acted the same, but in reverse. Can you just see the Canadian Mounties marching into Washington, DC to capture Trump? That’s where these ideas could lead.

So, It may not surprise you that targeting the leader of a sovereign state violates international law.

Should this be the law? Maybe we should let these guys brawl against each other in a fabulous arena somewhere—and leave the rest of us alone! Without them drumming up hostility toward some enemy, I think there is a good chance that ordinary people would be happy to be done with war.

This is a fantasy, of course.

Strongman leaders have honed the craft of manipulating the throngs who follow them. And this means that Trump could significantly improve his approval rating in America for this action. Remember that, for decades, Iran has been doing strongman stuff throughout the Middle East to distract from the awful job they are doing for their own people at home. Americans don’t like this, and they could give Trump credit for stopping it—if he is successful.

But they’re all bad guys. They want you to hand them power and riches and adoration for saving you from the other bad guys.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have leaders who inspire for how they enrich your life and the lives of your neighbors instead of how they can make someone else’s lives miserable?

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