In the dead of night, a merchant vessel, its hull breached by a US missile, sent out a desperate plea: ‘Please send help’. This is not merely a maritime mishap. It is a clarion call from the depths of our decadent age.
We have become so accustomed to the omnipotence of American military might that we forget its reach exacts a toll in human lives. The crew’s cry is a metaphor for a civilisation adrift, its moral compass shattered by hubris. One thinks of the Roman Empire, which, in its terminal decline, visited violence upon innocents with impunity.
The Victorians, too, understood the price of gunboat diplomacy. Yet we pretend this is an isolated incident. It is not.
It is a symptom of a wider rot, a decay in our international law, our shared humanity. The ship may be small, but the message is enormous: we are all, in some sense, asking for help before the next missile strikes.
