Last weekend in Vietnam. I leave for Bangkok Monday morning.
I still can’t figure out what’s real and what’s not in this war. There was a report the USS Carney was sunk by Iranian Al Fatah missiles and how this was going to change the global war calculus as there are 85 or so of these destroyers in the US fleet and we heavily rely on them.
I can find no onfirmation anywhere of this sinking. I did see that the Carney was conducting maneuvers in the Caribbean. So it’s not likely the destoryer was sunk at all.
Meanwhile, the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier was put out of commission for a week. This was not due to an Iranian attack, but a fire that “broke out” in the ship’s laundry room.
The vessel was near Cyprus when the fire started. The carrier’s deployment has endured for a year, months beyond its scheduled return, which keeps getting extended.
Forgive me for being cynical, but when I heard that—and the origination site of the fire—I concluded—with no additional evidence—that the fire had been set by sailors who were tired of being at sea.
I remember a Vietnam War story told to me by Navy Capt. Ernie Lindberg, who crossed paths with me in Panama.
According to Lindberg, two Marines on an aircraft carrier were looking forward to a little R&R in the Philippines when an announcement came that, due to port congestion in Subic, the aircraft carrier would not be able to dock and so all shore leave was cancelled.
The Marines, fresh from the jungle, did not take this news well. They knew that if they threw a sailor overboard, the ship would have to dock for the investigation. They threw the sailor overboard. Reported it; the vessel docked, shore leave restored. It was a question of time before they would come under suspicion, so they made their way back to California.
In California, they went to the Army recruiting station, claimed that their Marine enlistment had ended and volunteered for Vietnam. Few were volunteering for the war in 1968. No basic training was required of the two. By the time the Navy caught up with them, they were back in the jungle.
So here. Away at sea for a year, shore leave cancelled, home leave cancelled and a new war that only started on February 28th demanded their presence.
The Ford would be a sitting duck trying to cross Houthi-controlled territory in the Red Sea and it was too dangerous to try to sail the Ford through the Straits of Hormuz.
Setting a fire meant an investigation, maybe returning to port in a NATO country–Cyprus—and maybe even a crew exchange. Standing in the laundry room with a cigaret lighter, just having received a message from the wife back home detailing a list of problems you can’t deal with because you’re out of the country, if you were home the fix would be trivial; what would you do?
You may have had no intention of committing arson, but the hand of evil might somehow move your own to solve your problems with a flick of the lighter’s wheel to torch just a pillow. “I don’t know what happened” is what you would say afterwards.
It wasn’t that long ago that a sailor was blamed for blowing up a gun battery during live drills on the USS Missouri battleship.
I remember the case because there was a Miami connection: the sailor was represented by Ellis Rubin, he of the Ronnie Zamora “television intoxication” case.
As ridiculous as that defense was then—you would only proffer such inanity if you had nothing else—it seems to me that today such a defense would be much more acceptable.
There was recently a crime where a teacher was beaten by a student from whom she had confiscated an iPad—and we have the word “doomscrolling.”
The Press had tried, convicted and sentenced the young sailor, but Ellis was able to show that he was completely innocent and that the crime was an accident caused by improperly packed or leaking gunpowder charges.
Ellis was an advocate for stutterers, by the way.
Perhaps the Navy, having been burned by Ellis, this time decided not to rush to judgment.
But I can’t help but think of those two Marines, standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier, outraged that their leave was cancelled.
I don’t know what happened to them. They could hardly be charged with desertion or cowardice—they were back in the jungle fighting when the Shore Patrol found them.
Charging them with murder? What was the line from Apocalypse Now about murder and parking tickets?
The Navy would be well-advised to keep the Ford out of perilous Houthi waters, not to mention the more perilous Straits of Hormuz. Perhaps keeping it on station in the Mediterranean is the more prudent course.
Perhaps blaming its failure to move closer to the war theater and risking a General Belgrano catastrophe on an accidental fire in a laundry room, of all places—is a brilliant strategic move.
I was not here. I did not say these things.
Thirty days of war as of today. And there is no suggestion that peace is at hand. The United States started this war. Was that not waging an aggressive war in Nuremberg terms? The war has expanded, but not terribly: Yemen is now involved. Israel is a combatant so counter-strikes against Israel could only be expexted.
Southeast Asia gets its natural gas through the Strait and so has been cut off. A few ships have gotten through, but now Iran is charging tolls for purportedly safe trips through its territorial waters.
Shortages and price increases apply. Helium supplies have been cut off. The gas is essential for chip manufacture and for MRI machines. Not to mention Zeppelins and children’s voice-changing party balloons.
The political situation that obrained before the war started has not changed. Iran’s Supreme Leader has been killed, but his government is still in place.
Perhaps the United States believes that, as in WWII, if you kill the country’s leader the regime collapses. This is not the case with Iran. In the absence of collapse, there is no secondary plan; what the Press calls an “off-ranp.”
Japan is a resource-poor country. We forget that one of the principal causes of the war with Japan was depriving Japan needed access to oil, then primarily sourced from Indonesia, at the time a Dutch colony. Japan learned its lesson. Out of all the Asian countries, Japan has the deepest stockpiles of oil.
After years of Western sanctions, Iran has learned the lesson of self-sufficiency. The same is true for Qatar, cut off from the world by its brothers in the GCC. Both Iran and Qatar need access to the Strait to bring in supplies to feed their home-grown industries.
Dubai, they say, is taking a tourism hit. Dubai is a strange place. There is no there there. It exists as a counterweight to the restrictions of Saudi Arabia. But Saudi Arabia has under its young Crown Prince lessened or removed those restrictions.
It is no longer necessary to fly to Dubai or Bahrain to see a movie. Europeans don’t come to Dubai as tourists, what is there to see? They do come as tax exiles; as snowbirds.
Russians and Ukrainians both come fleeing the war back home. In Dubai they are indistinguishable. That is, though they are able to identify each other, non-Russian speakers cannot tell them apart. In Dubai as in so many other places, language trumps politics.
The Europeans are unaccustomed to civil strife at levels common to the Middle East. They simply suffered the inconvenience of connecting flights as the airports in the UAE shut down. Long-term UAE residents so far have seen little disruption: “the building next door was hit, but there’s still food at the grocery store.”
Riyadh has suffered retaliabory missile strikes from the Houthis for the better part of the last decade. Their renewal is no reason to panic.
Though they deny it, Iran has struck Aramco before. Closing the Strait is easier than imprecise targeting. Aramco will not risk sending tankers through Iranian waters and so the oil will remain in the Ghawar.
When the guns of August fired in 1914 after the assassination of the Archduke, the British cried that the “boys will be home by Christmas”. That prediction failed miserably as the war grew into a bloody stalemate.
“No battle plan,” said von Clausewitz more accurately, “survives first contract with the enemy.” Unfortunately Trump did not learn that lesson.
The Press yammers on about the start of WWIII while looking for photo-ops. Asia is not involved in this conflict and has no reason to.
Africa, now stripped of colonizers, has no reason to get involved in a war among those former colonizers. South America has no reason to involve itself in this conflict either.
No predictions here. Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline is not wide enough to carry oil out of its Eastern Province. What oil it can move can be blocked by the Houthis.
Nigerian oil is not affected. Nor is Mexican or even Russian. The United States and Israel have been squabbling with Iran for decades. Only a catastrophe suffered by all sides will be enough to stop the fighting.
There is no catastrophe in the offing.