We knew that all the nations around the world would eventually have to deal with the reality of uncertainty under U.S. President Donald Trump, but the amount of uncertainty, we realize now, is too much even for the Trumpian universe. I am trying to deal with it in my humble capacity. However, even after 60-plus years of experiencing the reality and unreality of international relations, I still find it incomprehensible and laugh whenever I think about it.
Like you all, I forced myself to look on the bright side of the appointment of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense. I tried to convince myself by arguing (as David Easton, the late political scientist who served from 1947 to 1997 as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and created the Systemic Theory of Political Science) that any person who succeeds in overcoming the obstacles to get elected as the president of the U.S. must be a genius. However, it is also me who cannot appreciate his wisdom. Ten current and former Fox employees might say Trump’s pick for defense secretary drank in ways that concerned his co-workers, but Trump might have known better that Hegseth is not a drunkard as they all claim.
After all, no matter how hard he hated the military hegemony the capitalist imperialism created all over the world, all U.S. presidents need an army and a navy if they really want to keep the country safe. As secretary of defense, Hegseth would only fire more than half a dozen generals and flag officers who had him disciplined when he was serving as an Army National Guard officer, but not destroy the whole U.S. military establishment.
It took me a while to digest Trump’s calling of Mike Waltz, a former Florida congressman, “a nationally recognized leader in national security” whose only fame in the security field was his being co-founder of the analytics and training company Metis Solutions. It was bought in November 2020 by Pacific Architects and Engineers for $92 million. Upon becoming the national security advisor under President Donald Trump, Waltz retired from the Army Reserve at the rank of colonel.
I don’t want to deal with the difficulty everybody had in comprehending why adversary-turned-ally Senator Marco Rubio is the secretary of state in Trump’s Cabinet. Other than as the second “China Hawk” after Waltz, Rubio had no outstanding political (or personal) feature that made Trump stop disparaging “Little Marco” and pick him for secretary of state.
He was the president, after all, and like all egotistical people with egocentric personality disorder, he would be calling all the shots himself at the end of the day, whether about Russia, China or Canada.
Simple mistake of Signalgate
Who could imagine that former President George W. President Bush’s defense policy director in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney’s counterterrorism advisor could add a journalist (an anti-Trump and a registered democrat editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Magazine) to a Signal chat group created to plan and execute U.S. areal strike against Yemen’s Houthis?
It is a long story but it is funny as well. They “inadvertently” added Jeffrey Goldberg into their private (and highly sensitive) military intelligence and political decision-making group. They then discussed how they should respond to Houthis renewed attacks in Yemen.
Who was in that group? As Goldberg saw in the group chat, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, among others.
Now titled the “Signalgate,” this shockingly dreadful leak might look like a “simple mistake” or you might think that Trump knew he was going to call all the shots, big and small, economic and military, diplomatic or theatrical, romantic or utopian. We could assume he knew his “secretaries” were simply ornamental cherries, window dressing and dummy mannequins (you get the picture!); so he simply did not pay attention to their personal qualifications.
On the contrary, Trump picked not-so-smart-alecs to save himself from those who later would turn out to be irritating because they could behave as if they knew everything (e.g., John Bolton, the national security advisor for six months in 2019, whom Trump had to literally kick out of the Oval Office). However, he ended up having an “Amateur Hour” (broadcast on the radio from 1934-1952, and on television from 1948-1970).
Like the people on those programs in which the participants show a lack of skill, sound judgment or professionalism and make listeners and viewers roll on the floor laughing out loud, the U.S. vice president, CIA chief, national security advisor, secretaries of defense and foreign affairs talk as if a journalist was listening in. Two hours into the top-secret strike on Houthis, they shared the operational information about which fleets were going to participate, what their route would be and the coordinates of targets (even the names of the targeted persons and their house street numbers).
Should Jeffrey Goldberg, the chief editor of the Atlantic, be someone else, or his computer and cell phone hacked by someone hostile to American interests, (or someone acting with pure journalistic instincts) two hours would be ample time to prepare a counterattack on the U.S. forces. The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic. The defense secretary shares more damning information on the Signal chat group:
“1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)
1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)
1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.
MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)
We are currently clean on OPSEC (operational security)
Godspeed to our Warriors.”
Vice President responds, “I will say a prayer for victory.”
Classified or not?
They should pray that Jeffrey Goldberg is a conscientious journalist and that his computer/cell phone is secure so that all the information the loose lips shared on the non-secure, open-to-public social media platform about the U.S. military operations in Yemen remains secret. Goldberg did what a responsible journalist would do: He penned an article titled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans” and, covering the names of the CIA people and other operational details, called out the U.S. national-security leaders in a group chat shared military plans about upcoming military strikes in Yemen.
Instead of glancing down in shame, all the people in what they named on Signal the “principles’ group” said that they did not share “war plans” and secret information with the journalist. They blamed him. The Senate Intelligence Committee asked Gabbard and Ratcliffe about the scandal. Gabbard and Ratcliffe both said no classified material was shared in the Signal group. They said the communications were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information. Later, President Trump came to his minions’ rescue: “It wasn’t classified information.”
In other words, they said Atlantic Magazine was lying in its original article. Unlike the other participants of the Amateur Hour, Goldberg is a veteran journalist and he would not put up with being called a liar by Trump or by his smarty-pants cronies. He wrote another lengthy article, disclosing all the attack plans shared by Trump’s advisors.
Still, he withheld the full names of the CIA and Air Force officers.
As a responsible journalist, he asked the White House, CIA and the Pentagon if they objected to the magazine publishing the full texts. Strangely enough, all those screaming a day ago that no classified information was shared in the group, this time they would not approve the release of the group conversation. They said the messages in the group chat were intended to be an internal and private deliberation among high-level senior staff and sensitive information was discussed.”
All those people on the TV’s “Amateur Hour” would dance, talk, sing and play the violin. But they were not Jascha Heifetz or Itzhak Perlman.
You are enlightened when they play. But Team Trump makes you laugh.
Endnote: Some people apparently do not take it as a laughing matter. Nonpartisan and nonprofit organization American Oversight sued Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe and Rubio, alleging that the defendants failed “to meet their obligations under the Federal Records Act” by using Signal to communicate and plan “active military operations.” To Trump’s amazement, Judge James Boasberg, who temporarily blocked his administration’s deportations to a Salvadoran mega-prison, was appointed to a lawsuit. Trump says the judge suffers from “Massive Trump Derangement Syndrome.”