After all, the chat group in the encrypted Signal app, which included, among others, the Vice President JD Vance, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, was formed by Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor.
Image: File
PETE Hegseth, the US Secretary of Defence, has found himself in a very unenviable position. The evil Eye of Sauron has swung full square and focused with laser prescience on his infirmities, political immaturity and youthful predilections.
The omniscient power symbol of The Lord of the Rings’ Middle-earth legendarium is brimming sulphuric smoke and just getting started.
Poor Pete. He may not know. Where there is smoke, there is an arsonist!
It is odd, one might muse, how the youthfully exuberant former Fox News anchor has attracted the wrath of the almighty media so much.
After all, the chat group in the encrypted Signal app, which included, among others, the Vice President JD Vance, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, was formed by Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor.
Somehow, the classified war plans for dropping bombs on Yemeni targets were shared on this exclusively created group, notwithstanding the imprecision of the political or moral definition of their targets. It has become apparent that the plans were shared just less than a day before the appointed Zulu hour.
Only one snag. Mike Waltz added the Editor-in-Chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, whom the Republican establishment dearly loves to hate.
With true commitment to his craft, and disbelief at this windfall occurring in slow motion, as tragic as it was tantalising, Goldberg exposed this chat group of nineteen members, going by the incredulous style of ‘Houthi PC Small Group’.
And no doubt, by adding a person who had no top-tier security clearance, and despite Waltz’s protestations of innocence and inadvertence, so many levels of US national security protocols were breached.
In his lead exposé, he focused on Hegseth’s carelessness in sharing the war plans of an impending strike, which could have landed in the hands of hostile adversaries.
In his ad hominem, however, he spared Waltz’s egregious indiscretion of adding him to the odious chat group, nor did it occur to him that the Houthis are a whole tribal group with children, women, babies and the elderly who are not at war with anyone. The US is trying to fight the Al Ansar Movement by indiscriminately targeting an entire tribe. I digress.
From the fist bumps and fire emojis of self-aggrandisement by no other than Waltz, Sauron’s ire is nevertheless trained on the symbolic tattoos of Hegseth and no one else.
In the midst of all that bedlam, and ICC warrants of arrest or not, Benjamin Netanyahu, or ‘Bibi’ as his admirers refer to him, rolled into town. He came bearing gifts in maps and elaborate war plans on how to attack Iran’s nuclear sites, neutralise its air defences and eviscerate its vast oil assets.
In a special meeting convened at the Oval Office for consideration of Bibi’s special mission, Pete Hegseth voiced his concerns on such a stratagem and its larger ramifications. Trump quickly shot down the audacious plans, infuriating Netanyahu as he did. Bibi left in a huff without even a press conference.
The popular idiom, ‘hell hath no fury’…, had Netanyahu in mind. No sooner had he left, the Eye of Sauron struck with ferocity.
The headlines and their full contents were determined to end this languid episode and end the Secretary’s silly career in a portfolio only reserved for pro-Israeli war hawks.
Not to be outdone, this time Hegseth established his own Signal chat group on a private handset and included his wife, his brother Phil, his lawyer Tim Parlatore and ten others.
Going by the insouciant name of ‘Defence Team Huddle’, the exposure left him so vulnerable that only hiding behind the Scottish skirts of Donald Trump could save him.
The recriminations were particularly swift and severe. Advisers at the Pentagon, including Dan Caldwell, who oppose this planned recklessness and possible carnage in West Asia, or the Middle East as the British had preferred it, were quickly terminated.
Yet the beast could not be atoned, and it must be satiated. The headlines are purposefully suggesting that Donald J. Trump is scouting for a new Secretary of Defence.
Already, the all-knowing media is projecting the one candidate who will go to war with Iran on day one, the hawk of all hawks. Senator Tom Cotton!
Despite his vehement avowals that he would do anything that Israel wanted done, Hegseth’s denial of Bibi’s request has put a cross on his target, and he has no more room to manoeuvre.
A policy error here, a beer there, or indeed his wife insensitively attending another Pentagon meeting without security clearance, Trump will be triggered to bring in the big guns. At least this time round,, the biggest of them all. The Senator from Arkansas!
When Israel learnt of the negotiations between the USA and Iran, they dispatched their irascible Prime Minister to the White House to present their Iran-final solution, whatever that means.
Knowing of his planned visit, Trump and his team had to do something quickly to contain the warring instinct of their visitor.
And so Pete Hegseth and his fully detailed plans on Signal chat groups struck Yemen or what he calls ‘the Houthis’, with hubris, at great fanfare of his Signal netizens.. And President Trump’s agent of appeasement may be safe, if only for now.
Trump may have taxied to the end of his safe Israel runway. Days before he assumed office, he forced Bibi to sign a ceasefire agreement with Hamas, a move which begrudged him against the proponents who stand for the complete extermination of Gaza.
Sadly, though, the war gig must go on, and Milkovsky, now known as Netanyahu, must have his way.
The Eye of Sauron knows that with enough light shone on anyone in power, something inconvenient from the past is bound to show, to the collective disgust of the masses.
Like the vicious and murderous Ukrainian henchman of Josef Stalin, Lazar Kaganovich used to say…
‘Give me the name, I shall find you the crime’.
* Ambassador Bheki Gila is a Barrister-at-Law.
** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL.