Criminal in Chief
This is not strength
This is recklessness
Dressed up as bravado
Illegally capturing a foreign leader
Is not a flex of moral authority
It is an admission
You have abandoned it
There are rules
Precisely because power
When unchecked
Curdles into impulse
To ignore them
Is not to rise above the law
But to confess contempt for it
You do not protect national interests
By kicking over the table
That keeps war from breaking out
Yes, the captured leader may be a criminal
That fact does not grant sainthood
To the captor
Criminals do not cancel each other out
Like math errors
When a president behaves
Like a lawless actor on the world stage
The distinction between justice and revenge collapses
What remains
Is a drunken stagger
Through geopolitics
Fueled by ego
And applause lines
This is how wars are lit
Not with ideology
But with arrogance
With the assumption
That consequences are for smaller nations
Smaller people
Smaller men
With the belief
That power excuses procedure
That might rewrites right
That escalation is someone else’s problem
It is the lazy violence
Of a leader
Too impatient for diplomacy
Too enamored with their own reflection
To consider fallout
Real leadership is restraint
It is boring
Procedural
Infuriatingly slow
And it saves lives
What we saw instead
Was the tantrum of authority
Unchallenged
A reminder
The most dangerous criminal
In any room
Is the one convinced
That the rules were written for everyone else
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