It turns out that journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was ‘texted’ two-hours before the recent US attack on Yemen. Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of Defense texted him the war plan which included specific information about weapons to be used, targets and time of the strikes. Goldberg was included in a Signal group of high level US officials, which had the information of the coming attack.
The highest level of the US government, the people who have the power over not only the millions of US citizens but a vast majority of the world exhibited a rather mundane incompetence
The full article is available here, https://archive.vn/JEYep
It is worth seeing the conversation as a glimpse into the very human and rather unimpressive manner in which those who through the magic of government are granted so much power. Despite the many movies and television shows of impressive meetings and security measures, like most things in life, rather underwhelming and unimpressive.
The people of Yemen are not new to being bombed, starved and droned. They have endured almost a decade of attacks from the Saudi led coalition, that was supported and enabled by the AUKUS nations. Now, it’s the US and Israel that are taking up the mantle in the attacks on the impoverished region.
The Houthi who mostly are the rulers of Yemen have shown their support for the people of Palestine by attacking Israel with long range drone attacks and disruptions to shipping that passes near their coastline. To call the Yemeni maritime assets a navy would be generous but the flotilla at their disposal has harried and caused concern for the US Navy. In fact the engagement with the Houthi was according to the Associated Press, “most intense combat since World War II,” for the US Navy.
The poorest nation in the Middle East managed to survive years of fighting it’s wealthier neighbours and now it’s facing the US and Israel. Both of their militaries are veterans at fighting and at times losing to poor, disorganised regional forces so experience is a key factor for all concerned.
The US Vice President, in the leaked Signal conversation expressed his regrets at attacking the Houthi. Though, it’s unlikely that most Americans are that concerned with Yemen or even care to know where Yemen is. Just another alien location for them to remember simply because the US military is killing the people there. It would however suddenly become a place of note to them should a US warship get hit or is even sunk by the adaptable low budge Houthi who do have access to anti-ship missiles. Luck would need to be on their side, or the US Navy would need to be rather incompetent.
As in most conflicts the victims are the innocent. Those who have no say or choice in the policies made by those who rule, whether it’s those being taxed and regulated by the Houthi or the US government, the innocent suffer.
Meanwhile over in the UK, the current Prime Minister, Starmer is invoking a very English bluster. He is no Winston Churchill but as he stands between two Union Jacks, he moans threats towards Moscow and any other nation on the other side of the EU curtain. With an ailing military, he shakes his fist, the ghost of Maggie Thatcher nowhere in sight. The UK, which a century ago was THE EMPIRE is now becoming the sick man of Europe. In fact, the former sick man of Europe, Turkey has greater influence on the diplomatic and military front than any Saville-ite regime in London. If it was not for the worlds fondness of history, or maybe habit and the fact that the city of London itself still draws in much wealth thanks to despots, oligarchs and it’s stock exchange, most would simply ignore the UK.
But don’t worry those other nations who speak English also like to waggle a finger at the world around them, threats and bribes that can only go so far. It’s all out habit to assume that they are the rulers of the world or at the very least the most important thing about it. The US still has the capacity to blow up tents in the desert, to arm it’s proxies and send warships that can afford to fuel jets for sorties and has enough ammunition to kill suburbs of people. It’s allies on the other hand can’t afford such imperial luxuries.
Recently the Chinese navy sent an expedition around Australia. It was only when a civilian Virgin airlines flight was warned by the Chinese ships that they were about to conduct a live fire exercise that the Australian government became aware of their presence. The Chinese ships circled the continent and did what the Western powers have been accustom to doing, inserting their presence into other regions. Decades ago, the Australian military was called, Imperial Forces, now it’s called the Australian Defence Force. There is nothing defensive about it. It’s still very much an instrument for empire, Washington’s and not London’s. To call it a Defence Force would be naive, in fact it’s ever reliant on the US and since AUKUS has become a dependency.
The coming decades we shall see a shift, those who still hold onto the hubris of their past tendencies to be exposed as paper tigers. The welfare nations of Australia, Canada and the UK may very well be an Austro-Hungarian like carcinogen to their bigger imperial friend, the USA. Meanwhile, key government officials of the US through incompetence shared information to a journalist. In that strike on Yemen, 53 people were killed. Likely all of those killed were innocent people. Goldberg sat on the information until after the attacks, he could have saved lives but instead he waited it out.
In the end for most people in the English speaking nations, dead Yemeni’s are simply not relatable. They are not ‘real’ people to them. Few care. And if they do care, it’s the assumed right of the imperial English speaking nations to attack, starve and terrorise the people of such regions. Whether South-East Asia in the past, Central Asia, Africa or the Middle East, it’s the right of such powerful nations to moan about welfare and diversity and whatever the trending academic interests of the government corporate intelligentsia conjures up, the manure above countless unmarked graves of the innocent. For cultures that secrete have professionalised mental health, they certainly exhibit a tremendous amount of privilege.
There is a scene in the 1995 romantic comedy, The American President, where Michael Douglas plays the fictional president Andrew Shepherd, he exhibits a humanity after ordering an attack on Tripoli, “somewhere in Libya right now, a janitor’s working the night shift at Libyan Intelligence Headquarters. He’s going about doing his job… because he has no idea, in about an hour he’s going to die in a massive explosion. He’s just going about his job, because he has no idea that about an hour ago I gave an order to have him killed. You’ve just seen me do the least Presidential thing I do.”
The least presidential thing to do…
In fact, we know that ordering the death of distant strangers is by far the most presidential thing to be done by an American head of state. These are not unknowable monsters, they are just ordinary men. People like those now dead in Yemen, except through the magic of obedience and government they have power, power the kill without guilt or shame.
The biggest thing to come out of all this, is Goldberg’s scoop. That he has screen caps of a conversation on signal, not that fifty three human beings were murdered. What does that say about all of us?
