Boys and Toys

Boys and their multi-billion dollar toys. That is the explanation to which I point the recent escalation of patrols in the shipping lanes bordering Iran. While the security of oil tankers passing through this region is of some discrete interest to America and the president is certainly permitted to entertain the paranoid fantasies of his choice, the whole thing certainly reeks of provokation.

I am not the one who is briefed regularly on the movements of Iranian or other smaller ships in the region. Certainly, any of these "threats" to the security of the American energy supply should be held at bay by the biggest possible armaments. However, in light of recent developments and in consideration of the desire -- at least in principle -- for security, perhaps the idea to send a heavily armed ship into an international shipping lane to defend a convoy against no clear threat could be seen as very provocative. Especially considering that fighters could be scrambled from any of three locations to respond to the same type of threat that the escort would face. If the convoy was to be attacked by a suicide bomber, the eye-witness accounts of the remainder of the convoy would be no different than those of the escort.

The escapade of the past week, wherein the US Navy alleged that it was threatened by Iranian vessels, is an example of how the escort can do more harm than good for relations. The escort boat was approached by several small speed boats. These speed boats, each less than one tenth the size of the armoured escort vessel, passed close enough for the commander to threaten then use of deadly force.

As an insult to the intelligence of the American people, a video of the encounter was released widely into the US media engine. This video carries an eerie voice-over that says, "you will explode in a few minutes." this incident happened on Monday, the video was released on Tuesday. It was not until Thursday that Naval Intelligence admitted that the voice-over may have been from another source - perhaps ashore rather than aboard one of the vessels. This news has not been disseminated as widely as the shocking footage of a near attack.

So, what is there to learn from this escapade? First, that any action taken in the vicinity of a paranoid superpower warrants characterization as a threat. The legitimacy of the action or the threat is inconsequential. Second, any such action taken renews the drumbeat of war. Third, this being the latest news, that a simple prank can engage the imagination and energies of media outlets everywhere to ratchet up fears and to erode steps toward peaceful relations. Fourth, the intelligence gathering resources of the worlds greatest war machine is no better at filtering reality from crap now than it was four years ago, but it is just as good at getting the bad news out.

Here, Kurt Vonnegut would say, so it goes.