There’s also the stabilising effect on oil prices, which is much more important than 3% of trade. Not mentioned in the chat though, apparently.
The Signal chat doesn’t come across as a group that wanted to demonstrate US military capability and will. They seemed genuinely reluctant, albeit gung-ho.
of course she does Chris, look at her job :-) but there was a pod I heard yesterday, sorry forgot who that said these are just a bunch of people who just want WAR (cue Day Today) and thats it for them, all cosplaying. The weird thing is their base want none of this ...
Yes, they want to kill some people to find out what getting away with it feels like. There's less of a risk if they are far away, poor and speak another language, and if they aren't white that's a huge bonus. Any rationale for the victim as a threat or an adversary is post hoc. The sadism is all.
Surely the attack was done to benefit the Israelis? The Houthis attack only Israeli ships, and those protecting Israeli ships. The Houthis stopped their attacks during the Gaza ceasefire, and had only recently resumed them. The apartment block bombing is unquestionably a war crime.
And she’s now on Bluesky so follow @elisabethkendall.bsky.social for expert insight on #Yemen in particular but also more generally on issues relating to the Arab world and on UK academia.
Both MAGA and Netanyahu should understand killing a lot of civilians does not reduce the number of opposition soldiers and terrorists- it increases them. Do they?
All of the history of conflicts in the last 80 years shows this.
Fascinating breakdown! So they wanted to play a real live game of WAR just for shits and grins. They put service lives in danger, killed innocent men, women and children and the idiots got caught. Why are they not behind bars right now for treason and murder?
That’s a v v dark theory. What about something about sabre rattling? Just to show they can? Is there a Russia-wants-this angle? Don’t know. Anything apart from this theory of toy playing…
They're doing fascist theatre for their base. And it's possible that in some deranged cargo cult way, they think it will have positive outcomes in the world. But the fascist theatre is the primary goal.
Another couple of possibilities:
- that no one on the chat really knows why they are doing it
- that they are a bunch of cowboys who just want to shoot their guns.
Comments
The Signal chat doesn’t come across as a group that wanted to demonstrate US military capability and will. They seemed genuinely reluctant, albeit gung-ho.
All of the history of conflicts in the last 80 years shows this.
Another couple of possibilities:
- that no one on the chat really knows why they are doing it
- that they are a bunch of cowboys who just want to shoot their guns.