I find Hegseth's focus on Khamenei's "disfigurement" very interesting

Hegseth has repeatedly boasted in press conferences about the disfigurement of Mojtaba Khamenei by a US/Israeli airstrike. I find this suprising.

To be clear, I'm not saying he's unusually bloodthirsty. I remember how Dems reacted to the killings of Bin Laden and Ghaddafi. But the focus on disfigurement is strange.

There's a very strong western tradition of considering battle scars to be inherently admirable. This runs from the Roman empire, which saw them as a sign of virtue, through Western Christianity with its 'man of sorrows' iconography, to the modern day. Whether they are villainous or heroic, if a character in a film has an eyepatch or a scar they are understood to be tough, and worthy of respect.

The idea that battle scars would be humiliating for a leader is an oriental one. Byzantine pretenders would be disfigured to make them incapable of threatening the throne. Confucians put great importance in bodily integrity.

If I were trying to propagandise against the Iranian leadership I'd be claiming Khamenei was cowering in a bunker somewhere. The last thing I'd want to do would be building him up as a battle-scarred survivor.

On a side note, I also find it pretty noteworthy how glib liberals are about making fun of Bolsonaro for his health problems, which stem from a brutal assassination attempt he barely survived. Maybe it's a culture-wide phenomenum, where were more distanced from violence and losing our instinctive respect for its victims.