I don’t think Trump does the things he does in order to distract us from the Epstein files. When it comes to Epstein, he’ll lie and deny, but what looks like intentional distraction … inducing economic chaos and starting wars … is what he’d be doing anyway, even if there were no Epstein files. Whether he does these things because he’s a stupid thuggish asshole, or because he thinks he’s king and likes to push buttons and make people jump, or because he’s an actual agent of Vladimir Putin, well, that remains to be seen. My money’s on the first.
Iran has been unfinished business since the hostage crisis of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Not just the current administration but a lot of Americans, my generation in particular, still wants to get back at Iran for that, as well as its decades of hostility toward the U.S. and the unrest it has caused, and continues to cause, throughout the Middle East. And then there’s that weird streak of Christian nationalism and end-times fundamentalism at play in the lackies Trump surrounds himself with, Pete Hegseth in particular, who think they’re waging a holy war and setting the stage for Jesus to come back, hoover up all the good white Republican Protestants, and bring on Armageddon for everyone left behind, the Jews in particular (Israel, our partner in invading Iran, knows damn well this is how Trump’s minions view the matter).
The more I think about the three Strike Eagles downed by Kuwaiti friendly fire on the first day of our new war with Iran, the most confused I get. If anyone’s had recent practice with air battle command & control (which necessarily includes coordination w/allied nations), it’s U.S. Central Command, the joint command running our operations in the Middle East. Could it be CENTCOM battle staff is being overruled or countermanded by higher authority? Do I hear echoes of Lyndon Baines Johnson & Robert McNamara meddling with mission planning during the air war in Vietnam? Hegseth gave a press conference where he pooh-poohed rules of engagement. That’s the compulsive drunk’s attitude toward command & control. Anyone who’s fought or trained under ROE knows why those rules exist. They’re written in blood.
Now we learn the three Strike Eagles were downed by air-to-air missiles fired by a single Kuwaiti Air Force F/A-18 pilot: one, two, three, just like that. I can only assume the Mudhens were together, flying in loose formation, and that the Kuwaiti pilot closed in on them from their six o’ clock and fired IR Sidewinders at them, missiles which give no warning. I’ll also assume the Mudhen crews, returning from a stressful strike mission against targets inside Iran, had relaxed their visual lookout, thinking they were back in friendly airspace. Oops.
Sidewinders are close-in weapons. The Kuwaiti pilot would have had his targets in sight, close enough to visually ID them. The F-15 airframe, common to both the single-seat Eagles I flew and the two-seat Strike Eagles currently flown by the U.S. and Israel, is a very distinctive aircraft. Fighter pilots train extensively in visually identifying targets. No way I or anyone I ever flew with would confuse an F-15 with a MiG-29 or Su-27, even though all three have twin tails. There’s more to the story … I wonder if we’ll ever hear what really happened.
Reading the reaction to the shootdown on social media … “thus endeth the F-15 Eagle’s 104 to 0 winning streak” is typical … I’m giving up on trying to educate people about the difference between single-seat air-to-air Eagles and two-seat air-to-ground Strike Eagles. It’s a losing battle, and anyway, the single-seaters are almost all retired, at least from the U.S. Air Force; while Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Japan still fly the single-seaters their days are numbered. Apart from its two-seat cockpit and larger canopy, a Mudhen looks just like an Eagle, and in fact is just like an Eagle: same fuselage, same wings, same pretty much everything. Never mind that the two aircraft were built, and are employed, for two different purposes.
I’m still trying to shake my cold. An old friend is in town and we really want to have her over for dinner, but I won’t expose her to whatever it is I have. Am I over-reacting? Since COVID, I tend to. I even put a mask on before going into the corner Walgreens to buy Mucinex and Afrin.
I have a new watch on order. A big day is coming up and with luck it’ll be here by then. For now, I’m leaving you with two desktop photos I’m proud of: on the left, our his & hers moonphase watches; on the right, my Japanese treasures, six Seikos and an Orient. Ain’t they pretty?
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