Remember "Freedom Fries"? Also Aircraft Carriers?

If you need to brush up on that bit of Americana, there’s a Wikipedia page.

Why do I resurrect this now obscure topic?

Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand

Truly extraordinarily powerful interview of Dominique de Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, on Gaza.

I can't stress enough how rare it is to hear a former French PM speak like this.

He says France "no longer has a voice on the international scene", because (among other things) of its "double-standards" and lack of action with regards to Gaza.

He calls France's internal silencing of what's happening in Gaza a "real scandal in terms of democracy", making France live in "absurdity" and resulting in it "fading away". He says that we (France and the West in general) would have many levers to stop the war - in terms of armament or economic sanctions - "but we refuse to use these levers with arguments which are absolutely unreal culturally or intellectually speaking. Saying 'we need to let Israel fight its war to the end': but what end? What is the end?".

As a consequence he says that France and the West will "foot the bill" for what's happening in terms of loss of credibility and legitimacy.

On Gaza specifically he calls it "undoubtedly the biggest historical scandal since... I don't even dare to find a reference", calling it a war "not like the others since it is civilian populations that die". He also rebukes the journalist for using the usual term "according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health" with regards to the number of death: "There's not only the Ministry of Health from Hamas which says that there are 40,000 dead. And there are probably many more, MANY more! So from this basis let's not give the feeling that it would be a number like that, unreliable. No!"

Probably the most powerful quote of the interview, literally gave me shivers: "In Gaza bodies are torn into pieces, Hearts are in pieces! Souls are in pieces! Heads are in pieces!" ("À Gaza les corps sont en morceaux! Les coeurs sont en morceaux! Les âmes sont en morceaux! Les têtes sont en morceaux!")

He says that "Israel has no political objective and when you have no political objective the only thing you can do is war... There is a security objective, there is an identity objective, there is a messianic madness and that explains the catastrophe that we're witnessing."

0:21 / 3:55

10:01 PM · Sep 12, 2024

OK Then @okaythenme

Why do they only talk like this after leaving office?

Everyone’s brave once they no longer have any power.

Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand

In the case of Villepin it's absolutely NOT true. Remember his extraordinary speech at the UN to oppose the Iraq war (which led to the whole replacing "French fries" with "freedom fries" idiocy in the US)

Talk about French foreign secretary to the UNO

Talk about Dominique de Villepin to the Security Council of the UN in February 14th, 2003.French version:

10:11 PM · Sep 12, 2024

On to aircraft carriers!

Marat Khairullin is a very well known Russian war correspondent (his name is probably Turkic of some sort—Tatar or Kazakh?). He has a substack in English and one of his recent articles deals with the demise of the American carrier fleet—a topic that has arisen regularly in the last few years.

The hegemon is going down Part 1: The US Navy

The basis of US military power is dominance over the oceans. This is achieved through aircraft carrier strike groups (CSGs), an excellent nuclear submarine fleet, and, in principle, a large number of surface ships. It is impossible to analyze in detail how rapidly all three of these main components of US military power are deteriorating in one article. Therefore, in the first part, let's focus on the CSG. We will talk about other aspects in the following materials of this series of journalistic investigations.

What does military intelligence see in the Middle East that we don’t?

Currently, the US carrier fleet has 11 nominally serviceable carriers - 10 previous generation Nimitz and one of the newest Gerald Ford series. The events around Israel, which have been going on for almost a year, show that the US has simply become critically decrepit in military terms, and right before our eyes. The fact is that the doctrine guiding America's CSGs assumes that the US should always have three aircraft carriers ready for combat, which they can send to any part of the world at any time. Moreover, two aircraft carriers are always on duty in the Western Hemisphere, one in the Eastern.

The issue of preparedness or readiness is certainly important, and that’s what the word “decrepit” conjures up. Khairullin reprises all the numbers on that score:

• On average, the combat duty period of one CSG barely reaches two months. Only in one case was it about three months. This is despite the fact that the US naval doctrine provides for the cast-iron presence of each CSG on combat duty at sea for at least six months, and if necessary, up to eight.

• Another fact: for the first time in many years, the United States left the Eastern Hemisphere without a strike group, having been forced to pull the aircraft carrier on duty from there to the Red Sea. And, as I believe, the US will soon be forced to leave only one CSG in the relevant, one might even say, fateful crisis for them in the Middle East.

• According to figures from publicly available sources, one day of a standard CSG at sea (without actual combat operations - this is important) costs the American budget 6 million dollars

• delays in technical maintenance of one vessel (on average) have also increased by almost 4 times - from five days to 19. ... Considering how many US naval shipyards have gone bankrupt and closed since then, and considering the growing avalanche-like outflow of qualified technical specialists from both the Navy and related industries, it can be predicted that the US will face a very big problem in terms of quickly carrying out mandatory technical maintenance of the CSGs after combat duty.

• on average, American Navy crews are only 85 percent staffed. If we take, for example, the crews working in the CSGs in the Middle East, they serve in a state of almost constant emergency.

This isn’t really news, for those who follow military matters—although that group apparently doesn’t include the Anglo-Zionist policy makers who are constantly rattling sabers around the world, threatening war on all and sundry. Threatening Russia with deep missile strikes, while our carriers can no longer operate safely in the Red Sea, as it seems.

However, Khairullin makes a very smart additional point regarding the Iranian demonstration strike on Israel, in which Iran’s ballistic missiles—the “money” part of the strike package—successfully evaded the combined air defenses of Israel, the US, UK, and France and hit their targets with great precision. Given that a key part of those mustered defenses—gathered with forewarning—were US navy ships, especially Aegis equipped ships, that means that Iran not only defeated Israel’s Anglo-Zionist assisted air defenses—it also defeated the systems that are supposed to protect aircraft carriers from missiles attacks.

Iran’s previous, so to speak, targeting attack on Israel demonstrated the latter’s critical dependence on the CSGs.

The fact is that [every CSG] includes a powerful air defense detachment. This is a cruiser (or even two) and three or four destroyers. ... But even with this serious force, Iran managed to penetrate both the air defense of Israel proper as well as that of the CSG.

Now look: Iran is threatening some kind of terrible, incredible response, the crisis in Gaza is not dying down, military action in Lebanon could start at any moment, and the Houthis are constantly launching something. That is, Israel has been kept, so to speak, in a tense state for almost a year now.

This country is a key ally of the US in the Middle East. By abandoning it, they will lose their real influence in the region, through which most of the world trade travels, many times over. While there is such tension there, whether you like it or not, the hegemon has to keep its CSGs there. Iran is taking advantage of this, because then the usual arithmetic comes into play.

As we know, the US last week sent a warning to Israel that confirmed the math (which includes wear and tear on equipment and personnel, other responsibilities, funding, etc.): We can’t keep this up indefinitely. No doubt Russia, Iran, and China are having a good laugh over this. Even the lower levels of the Axis of Resistance who have been frustrated by Iran’s delay are probably recognizing the wisdom of the delaying tactic. And this may also be a factor in the USS Lincoln so far giving the Red Sea a wide birth.

These are all problems that cannot be remedied in a year or two. Which is why global hegemony is coming to an end.