The U.S. really loves to refer to legitimate recognized governments who control most of their country as “rebels” and “militants”
“Houthi-rebels” no removed that’s the Yemeni government
the Houthi rebels have stated they plan to target more Israeli ships in the southern Red Sea.
I hope that the neocolony is happy about this. It must be running a test to see how much a government can be hated before everybody gets sick of its shit and overthrows it.
It’s so wild. They literally went hospital to hospital, like the Marines going from island to island in World War II (with even more racism).
The ship was sailing from Turkey to India under a British flag and the ship is ultimately owned by a Japanese company. The Israeli company/billionaire is just a major stockholder in the Japanese company. Israel could care less about this ship.
The reason Israel and US will care is because this creates a risk of doing trade with Israel that passes through Suez Canal. This raises the cost of doing business with Israel, and puts US in a difficult position.
Hopefully, but knowing the US they would just redirect anti-piracy units operating in the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea. Or they would begin to arm merchant ships which itself is a big problem, but I doubt the US and Israel care much for international law.
knowing the US they would just redirect anti-piracy units operating in the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea
Putting all my big expensive warships in a nice tight shallow lane full of heavy merchant traffic. Do any of the sailors on the USS Cole have some insight as to why that might not be a great idea? Anyone? No? Okay, nevermind then. Sounds like a great idea.
Or they would begin to arm merchant ships which itself is a big problem
The big problem with arming merchant ships is that this would require them to maintain a larger staff with significantly more autonomy. Mercenaries aren’t cheap. Using advanced anti-ship weapons isn’t easy. And maybe you don’t want to give the sailors you imported from Jakarta on cheapo salary access to six-figures in hardware that would sell like lightning at any of the ports of call your ship plans to visit.
Putting all my big expensive ships in a narrow straight so they’re easier to attack and then I can use that as justification to fully go to war with whoever I want.
As for arming the ships they’ll just find a bunch of highly trained contractors with duct tape over where the navy badges would normally be, only downside is they are super expensive.
then I can use that as justification to fully go to war with whoever I want
At a certain point - particularly given how comically padded the US military’s provisioning has become - you can’t just wage war with whomever you want. There’s a real cost to all this, and the US economy has been eating it for decades. War might look good on a balance sheet for a particular business quarter-to-quarter, but its shit for the overall health of an industrial economy long term.
We simply cannot be at war with every single recalcitrant country in Asia, at once, all of the time. That’s a big reason why we pulled out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Its a big reason why we’ve shed much of our zeal for Ukraine after a couple of years of conflict. Its a big reason why we backed off treating China as an existential threat. Nobody seems to be interested in the African West Coast anymore, either, despite the wave of coups and uprisings from Niger to Senegal. Nevermind Ethiopia running hot-and-cold with Tigray.
It is entirely too much for the US to manage, particularly when the BRICS are no longer willing to play along.
As for arming the ships they’ll just find a bunch of highly trained contractors with duct tape over where the navy badges
That’s far more than the private companies want to spend. And while the US could foot the bill, there simply aren’t enough ex-military contractors to go around for this many ships.
We simply cannot be at war with every single recalcitrant country in Asia, at once, all of the time.
Someone needs to tell the current regime that. On the other hand, no don’t tell them anything. Let them continue.
Someone needs to tell the current regime that.
Again, there’s a reason Biden had to commit to pulling us out of Afghanistan. There’s a reason we’re stumbling and backpeddling on our support for Ukraine. There’s a reason we didn’t try and invade Brazil or continue our campaign to harass Cuba or further ratchet tensions in the Straight of Taiwan.
Blinken is at the end of his rope and knows it. That’s why he did the multi-state tour following genocide in Gaza. He can’t afford to divert assets to a full blown fight with Israel at the center. Not after Iraq and Iran have aligned, the Saudis are going their own way, and half of West Africa is in revolt.
Man. Just a few years ago, I’ve never imagine witnessing the downfall of an Empire in real time.
BTW, overexpansion and militarily overspending was one of the causes of Rome’s downfall. Does it make the USA Rome 2.0?
Lol yea America totally can’t just go to war with whoever they want for nebulous justifications.
As a counter example I would point you to the last 60 years of American foreign policy.
The last 60 years have been a great point in my favor. Since Korea, we’ve been posting Ls every 20 years. And its cost us heavily, both in modern industry (which we’ve shipped out to countries that aren’t in perpetual wartime footing) and in domestic infrastructure (roads/bridges collapsing, aviation industry in retreat, silicon sector morbund, bio-tech sector lagging Cuba). We export raw materials and import finished goods. The polar opposite of what an imperial superpower is supposed to be doing.
The only two finished products we produce reliably are fossil fuels and fission bombs. Everything outside of that is FIRE sector speculation. That’s been the consequence of US foreign policy. We’ve surrendered all the bedrock industries that gave us international footing at the end of WW2. Not good.
Do any of the sailors on the USS Cole have some insight as to why that might not be a great idea?
Do you think the US war machine gives a damn about the welfare of their saliors and officers? The Cole wasn’t sunk, or badly damaged for that matter but even if let’s say 3 frigates get sunk (an absurd scenario in the case), the US would care less and use it as a justification to increase their presence.
Plus if we’re being honest, it took years of preparation and the bombers being VERY lucky to pull off the Cole bombing. The ships electric detection system was offline, many sailors only died because it was lunch time and everyone was lined up in the galley that was alongside where the detonation occurred, and the captain was expecting a refueling ship which distracted the observation crew, along several other factors. Al Queda had tried a few times before on other ships and all the bombers were just slaughtered, for example with the USS Sullivan.
Also, a “nice tight shipping lane”, unless an attack is happening in the Suez Canal itself, there are kilometers of sea in all directions inside the Red Sea. More then enough space for a pirate ship to be picked up on radar, or even just seen with the plain eye. I’m sure that a speedboat would fare well against a CIWS gun.
The big problem with arming merchant ships is that this would require them to maintain a larger staff with significantly more autonomy. Mercenaries aren’t cheap. Using advanced anti-ship weapons isn’t easy.
Do you doubt the eagerness of the US war machine to make more weapons sales? Plus I feel like you’re putting a bit to much weight in the weapons needed. They don’t need the merchant ships to be auxiliary cruisers, they’re not fighting warships. Literally 1 WW2 40mm bofors gun on the port and starboard side would solve the issue, if I’m being as cheap as possible.
The reason they haven’t done this is because it increases ship insurance.
Do you think the US war machine gives a damn about the welfare of their saliors and officers?
I think the sailors and officers in the region care. And I think it becomes increasingly difficult to manage a military when your frontline units are constantly flinching and cowering. IEDs in Iraq weren’t just about killing individual occupying soldiers. They increasingly bottled troop units up in their bases and “Green Zones”. The Highway of Death was no joke. Then, on a prolonged scale, they fractured Bush’s already-reluctant “coalition of the willing” and depressed recruitment at home and forced politicians and officers to wade through scandal after scandal as public opinion soured on the war.
The USS Cole bombing had a profound negative impact on public perception of military readiness. It was not eclipsed by the relative success of the US invasion of the Balkins during the Bosnian/Kosovo War or the success of Desert Shield in repelling Iraqis from Kuwait. But while we were in Iraq and Afghanistan, we were having convoys and bases hit practically every day. Hugely demoralizing for anyone interested in making a career as a US soldier.
Do you doubt the eagerness of the US war machine to make more weapons sales?
I doubt the capacity of production, given how much we’ve padded out the process of construction and distribution. Building at scale in the modern era has proved an insurmountable obstacle. That’s fine when we only do a few high profile engagements every couple of years. But in a protracted multi-front war spanning the entire rim of the Asian continent? And when you consider the sheer volume of shipping moving along the coast?
The whole reason we have a Navy to begin with is to defer the need for every merchant vessel to keep its own on-board company of marines. I’m sure someone would love to profit off a new need to arm every shipping container from Kenya to Kyoto. But that person isn’t on the board of Maersk.
The Cole was hit in port, not underway in the Red Sea. Also the merchant traffic in the Red Sea, especially where it gets concentrated down near the south, limits options for warship mobility that could absolutely allow determined actors get within striking range.
Yes, those ships, even merchents, do have capabilities and options for defense, but they’re not invulnerable. Hamas came over the wall in fucking paramotors. I wouldn’t underestimate the levels of ingenuity a beleaguered, desperate, and angry people are capable of.
I’m not saying your points are invalid, I’m just saying the threat against any ship out there is above 0% and there probably aren’t simple solutions given those involved and the environment.
I agree with the Cole port bombing, but that doesn’t really change what I said. That just puts it further into context that Al Qaeda was barely lucky enough to hit an out of commission frigate in port, let alone one underway. Plus merchant shipping being concentrated in the south is insanely protected, UN air and naval forces based out of Dijoboiti would make any determined strike a pointless suicide mission. They would be shredded by Chinese, French, US, Russian, British, Korean, Japanese, etc ships and aircraft the second they entered protected zones.
I agree that no ship is invincible, but you have to be realistic. Yemen is not fielding top of the line warships. There’s only so ingenious you can be with speedboats unless they somehow build themselves as SSK submarine I guess.
There’s no simple answer to this, but to act like any sort of rebel force has any sort of chance at victory in a scenario like this is insane.
I wasn’t trying to get you to change what you said, I was just adding context, flavor for discussion. We could discuss hypotheticals all day as well. With the way things have been heating up in the middle east over the Israel invasion, we may not have to wait long to see what could happen, to be honest.
Who knows, maybe they’ll strike a ship near the Bab-Al-Mandab to lure out that multinational strike force from Djibouti straight into a minefield.
What out of commission frigate were you referring to? The Cole is a destroyer and was struck during inport refueling.
Even this risks deeper escalation though as Yemen will protect its own interests.
Yemen is in no position to pose any sort of material threat to the United States. But also, why would they? The internationally recognized Republic of Yemen is a close US and Saudi ally, and essentially a puppet state. Further the Houthi movement has no standing navy, even auxiliary craft. What would they even do?
Suez is also the most vulnerable of the waterways in the world and the most important, historically every danger to imperialist control over it was met with swift and heavy handed answer.
Indeed, so it’s hard for US not to respond to this.
the ship is ultimately owned by a Japanese company
All the articles I’ve found say that the ship is chartered/operated by Japanese companies but owned by a British company called Galaxy Maritime Limited. Idk who owns GML, but could be the Israeli.
I think the point is not the direct loss of the ship, but the increase in Maritime insurance if the insurance ghouls think that the Yemenis are going to seize more Westoid ships sailing through Suez. The ultimate goal might be to get Maritime insurers to refuse to insure ships sailing through Suez, which would effectively result in Israel being forced to rely on its own merchant fleet.
Israel could care less about this ship.
Idk about that.
I really do hope so, any win the Palestinians and their allies can get is a plus.
Never say “it’s about geopolitical interests” the US was willing to throw all that into the water to do a genocide. The genocide is the goal.
The genocide, and moreso the ethnic displacement have always been the main side-quest in the Israel project. Displaced Palestinian people strain the social systems at the neighboring, non-friendly Middle Eastern countries. And eventually this leads to the rise of militant, often fundamentalist extremism. On October 7 the US seized the chance to do this at an incredibly accelerated pace. And create a pathway to spike a full-on war in the region to get those sweet fresh war dollars babyy.
I think the genocide is the goal of Israel, but US simply finds itself trapped because of their decades long position of supporting Israel unconditionally and significant political influence that Israel exercises in US. This situation is an absolute disaster for US right now because it’s turning the whole world against them, but they have no political path domestically to stop the genocide train.
I’m not going to spend a single joule feeling bad for the country when they’ve let it get to this point and show no remorse or even willingness to change. This isn’t a case of a troubled person who just needs help, this is a country that was literally built on genocide to export fascism.
I completely agree.
I guess it’s good to be empathetic by default, there are plenty of situations where the villain really is a victim of circumstance and just wants an out.
I generally tend to view US regime as simply having no regard for human life. It’s not that they commit atrocities for the sake of committing atrocities, but rather they see atrocities as means through which they advance their geopolitical goals. And in case of Israel, the genocide isn’t really helping US geopolitically.
Which is the main reason I see the atrocities as being the goal. The fact they’re willing to “spend” their geopolitical power on genocide really tells you what their end game really is. I struggle to think of any other framework where it would make sense to do such a thing.
Thing is that the genocide is now united all the Arab nations against both US and Israel. If all the countries in the region put up a united front, then US will end up being kicked out of the Middle East in the long term, and project Israel will likely collapse as well.
Major issue for the US is the Arab world reconciling with Iran. This situation undoes the past nearly 50 years of containment. Iran and it’s proxies are now effectively free to do as they please and Saudia Arabia will turn a blind eye.
I think that’s the biggest recent geopolitical development in the region as well. China managed to pull off a masterful geopolitical achievement brokering normalization of relations between the Saudis and Iran.
Blinken is shaking his head. Gonna go down as another McNamara. All his work undone because US foriegn policy is guided by Weltpolitik as opposed to Realpolitik.
He looks demoralized and depressed in every recent vid I’ve seen of him. Project Ukraine is unravelling, Middle East is an absolute disaster, any plans for containing China they might’ve had are fizzling fast. I think he’s starting to realize none of this ends will for this admin or him personally.
I’d say the US is a far more eager participant than you assume. As Biden himself has said in the past- “if Israel didn’t exist, the US would have to invent one to protect US interests.”
Israel is the physical embodiment of US influence in the MENA region, a key to destabilizing and controlling much of the world’s oil and the trade between Europe, Asia, and east Africa. Many Israelis with dual citizenship are part of the highest levels of US administration- Yellen and Blinken being the most high-profile names that come to mind. And even now as we speak, Hochstein, Biden’s energy security advisor, is in Israel talking about stealing (“developing”) the offshore gas recently discovered.
I would say that it is anything but a “unfortunate coincidence” that the US is backing this genocide. It’s not a one-off event, the US has backed every settler-colonial state and fascist dictatorship since WW2, and has an extensive history of instigating or otherwise supporting their acts of genocide, as well.
The situation is a disaster for the US, but as you said- they have no political path domestically to stop the genocide train, because said paths are wholly unfeasible and counterproductive to their end goals- the permanent destabilization and fragmentation of the Arab world (and the world outside the US and its western puppets, at large). Genocide is an inevitable part of the process of American hegemony to further this means, to maintain its ever-growing proxies’ foothold (whether it be the encroachment of NATO, the expansion of Israel, the spread of US foreign bases, the militarization of Taiwan, it’s all just part of that same pattern of never-ending expansion and aggression), and to find new reasons to terrorize the world on Wall Street’s behalf again and again.
Do average Americans hate what’s going on? Sure (at least, many do). And there’s increasing dissent among the pencil-pushers in government as well. But none of that matters to the US, at the end of the day, because the real powers-that-be behind the US- its wealthy elites- love Israel, and they stand with white, western supremacy, and I would even go so far as to say that they love genocide, just as they love war and destruction, because it is how they came to power and how they maintain their power.
Oh I completely agree that Israel is central to US strategy in the region, and I think this is precisely why it’s such a disaster for US. Israel doing an open genocide against the Palestinians is uniting countries in the region against Israel and by extension against US itself. US tried to play a peace broker in the region, and now this position has been completely discredited. The end result of all this could end up being all the Arab countries finally creating a united front and pushing US out with China coming in to replace it.
