The news headlines have been dominated all week by the administration's incredible blunder of accidentally including a journalist on a privileged Signal thread, in which multiple high-level members of the government's national security team shared confidential details of attack plans, in the ongoing U.S. bombing of Yemen.
In the days since this news broke, much of the pubic outrage has rightly focused on the administration's astonishing incompetence in enabling this leak in the first place. But there's something else troubling about that Signal thread that deserves to receive more attention: namely, the administration's obviously complete indifference to civilian casualties from their strikes, as demonstrated in the chat.
Probably no one is outraged about this because no one could be surprised. This is a group of people, after all, who have made no secret of their contempt for human rights (did they not deport plane-loads of people to torture in El Salvador with zero due process, just days before this?). But still, there's something particularly grotesque about seeing them crow over the deaths of innocents in real time.
I don't argue in principle with the idea that the Houthis have been the aggressors here. They are an Iranian-backed antisemitic death cult and terrorist organization that have been lobbing missiles at unoffending international merchant vessels, etc. I don't have the slightest sympathy for them, or oppose the idea in theory that the U.S. has the right to retaliate against their fighters.
But Yemeni authorities have been saying for days that these U.S. strikes have also hit residential homes and civilian targets. And when offered the chance to comment on these allegations yesterday—the New York Times reports—the Pentagon was silent. And the Signal chat does indeed seem to indicate that this administration is perfectly willing to accept civilian casualties.
One of the most distasteful parts of the leaked chat was the discussion between Hegseth, Vance, and Michael Waltz. The combination of pious sanctimony and sadistic brutality is all too typical of these men and perfectly encapsulates their tone. First, Hegseth wishes "Godspeed to our warriors." Vance weighs in with his usual hypocritical religiosity: "I will say a prayer for victory," he says.
Then Michael Waltz reports that U.S. soldiers positively identified a Houthi militant "walking into his girlfriend’s building," and that "now it's collapsed"—referring to the building. In other words, a U.S. strike had just led to the destruction and collapse of a residential building. What sort of building? An apartment building? Who was in that building? How many families?
How many children were in that building? How many parents? "Who was the father or daughter [...] Of the dead and abandoned body?"—as Harold Pinter once wrote, in one of the most powerful poems ever penned about civilian casualties. (Pinter wrote the poem some years earlier, I believe, but he would read it aloud to great effect in his 2005 Nobel Lecture, in protest against the Iraq War.)
After being told about this collapsed building, J.D. Vance replies to the thread: "Excellent." He who has just been mumbling prayers to the almighty now joins in celebrating the deaths of innocents. The ultimate blasphemy—to invoke God's name while dancing over the corpses of untold men and women and children who had just been consigned to oblivion by U.S. bombs.
Which reminds me of another poem that Harold Pinter quoted in that same Nobel Lecture: Pablo Neruda's "I'm Explaining a Few Things,"—written in response to the fascist bombing of civilian targets in the Spanish Civil War: "Bandits with black friars spattering blessings/ came through the sky to kill children," wrote Neruda (Tarn translation).
Hegseth and Vance similarly "spattered blessings" and prayers as they rained death on Yemeni children. "Godspeed to our warriors," says one. "I will say a prayer for victory," says the other. While the charred corpses are still burning. That's the real scandal of the Signal chat. It's not only this administration's incredible incompetence and stupidity. It's the pious cant and malice mixed in with it, too.
Writing about two centuries ago, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had an answer to all those who mix stupidity with malice in this way. He had an answer to all those who came to office claiming to oppose "forever wars" and now are seeking to expand the military budget. He had an answer to all those who wish "Godspeed to our warriors." I leave you with his words:
Were half the power, that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals or forts:
The warrior's name would be a name abhorred!
And every nation, that should lift again
Its hand against a brother, on its forehead
Would wear forevermore the curse of Cain!
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