Yesterday, we covered the U.S. Navy’s bizarre claim to have shot down its own F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet in a
non-combat scenario in a bafflingly incompetent manner that credulous corporate media euphemistically whitewashed as a “friendly fire incident.” The proposed narrative was strange because the
explanation raised about a million unanswered and unasked
questions. On Turkish media, I found an alternative narrative with more explanatory power. Turkiye AA ran the story Monday headlined, “
Yemen’s Houthis claim to down US fighter jet over Red Sea.”
The Houthis are a Muslim jihadi militia group that currently controls Yemen. Although they occupy the capital city and run the government, the Houthis are embroiled in a decade-long civil war against a Western coalition claiming to be the legitimate government in exile. (The moniker ‘Houthi’ is a scornful corporate media nickname meant to camouflage its religious identity; the group calls itself
Ansar Allah.)
Yemen is a peculiarly bleak desert country located on Saudi Arabia’s southern border. Some portions of the country’s landscape are so inhospitable that travel guides describe them as ‘alien.’ It is also an ancient Middle Eastern country with deep historical roots. In antiquity, for example, Yemen was known throughout the civilized world for producing frankincense and myrrh, such as was gifted to the baby Jesus.
(
Christmas Eve side note: according to the Book of Matthew, the wise men’s three gifts were gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gold symbolized kingship. Frankincense, used in Hebrew worship and medicine, symbolized Jesus’s role as High Priest. Finally, myrrh was widely used for embalming rituals, and thus symbolized death and resurrection.)
Despite being disorganized, underfunded, and comparatively primitive, the Houthis hold one solid geopolitical card. As is often true in war, they have a major advantage solely based on the good fortune of Yemen’s geography. Specifically, Yemen’s southwestern border abuts a narrow oceanic corner where the Red Sea makes a sharp righthand turn into the Gulf of Aden. Through this tight passage flows some of the world’s most valuable commercial traffic: oil. The only alternative route is around the dangerous Cape of Good Hope.
Without exaggeration, the Houthis enjoy enormous strategic leverage because of that critical shipping chokepoint. Up to ten percent of all worldwide commercial traffic and a substantial amount of military traffic passes right under the Houthi’s angry noses. The disruption of even a fraction of the traffic through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait —the “Gate of Tears” in Arabic— has global consequences, especially for the West.
Starting in late 2023, the Houthis suddenly and unexpectedly scrambled onto the global stage, launching missile attacks against Israel to the north and drone attacks against shipping traffic in the Bab-el-Mandeb. The rebels make good use of cheap water drones built out of remote-controlled motorboats filled with TNT. But in the last couple years, they have become much better funded and armed, such as with modern ballistic missiles, leading to speculation of Russian support.
The Russians have long warned that, if the U.S. continued to arm Ukraine, it would be fair for Russia to help the U.S.’s regional enemies with targeting data and so forth. Tit for tat.
In response to the Houthis’ attacks on Israel and its disruption of shipping, in 2023 the U.S. sent a naval carrier group —the Harry S. Truman strike group— and commenced a mission called “Prosperity Guardian,” intended to defend regional oil shipments and Israel.
That is the reason why the U.S. Navy was in the theater scrapping with seafaring Houthis this week.
With that background in mind, let’s return to the article. The story reported that Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said rebel forces responded to
a U.S. attack, and their response “was carried out using eight cruise missiles and 17 drones, resulting in the downing of an F-18 fighter jet while the destroyers attempted to intercept the Yemeni drones and missiles.”
In other words, the Houthis claimed credit for downing the F/A-18.
Useless corporate media has omitted most of those details, leaving us with seemingly contradictory claims: the military’s story about friendly fire versus the Houthis claim of its attack. But the two stories can be elegantly resolved. The Houthis didn’t claim to have shot the Super Hornet down
directly; the spokesman said their attack “resulted in the downing” of the U.S. fighter.
Resulted. Thus, it seems possible that during the chaos of the battle group’s response to the Houthi attack, the F/A-18 probably flew right into the path of an air defense missile just launched from the Gettysburg.
So,
technically the Super Hornet was downed by friendly fire. But corporate media is still lying through omission; the jet wouldn’t have been destroyed except for the Houthi attack, which corporate media either fails to mention at all or downplays in its stories. In other words, it is media mis- or dis-information; information that may be
true, but is missing context, so it is misleading.
In the wake of either the “friendly fire” incident or the successful Houthi attack, whichever,
the Wall Street Journal ran this headline yesterday:
We’re not winning. Fortunately, the two pilots safely ejected. But, it seems fair to chalk up the loss of the F/A-18 Super Hornet (retail $100 million) as additional cost to help fight the Ukrainian Proxy War. Hopefully, that importune misadventure will soon end.
Europe cancels Christmas while America restores it; Houthis vs F-18 fighter jet; media malfeasance on display; Trump game-changing pollster lawsuit; election interference; ABC settlement; more.
www.coffeeandcovid.com
Despite all the frantic triumphalism celebrating the cease-fire agreement, as of this morning it remains un-inked, and it involves parties notorious for agreeing to things and then backing out, sort of like what we used to call “Indian giving” until we found out that was racist, or culturally appropriative, or micro-agressive, or something, dammit, I can’t be expected to keep up with all this nonsense.
