Islamists Are Reenacting the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, and the Green Crowd Couldn’t Care Less

On the menu today: I can’t begrudge everyone for paying a lot of attention to the U.S. presidential race, but there’s a lot going in the world beyond Trump’s pouting and threatening to withdraw from the remaining debate. The Houthis are reenacting the Exxon Valdez spill in the Red Sea, to the yawns of environmentalists in the West; NASA can’t get its astronauts down from the International Space Station; and the U.S. Navy is quietly putting together plans to remove the crews from 17 Navy support ships “due to a lack of qualified mariners to operate the vessels.” If you want to get a good sense of how the Democratic nominee would perform in the Oval Office, take a good look at the performance of the administration in which she’s currently vice president.

It’s an Islamist Oil Spill; That Kind of Spill Is Completely Different

Do America’s environmentalists oppose the Houthis’ blowing up oil tankers because it results in massive spills and a “severe ecological disaster,” or quietly support them because they represent attacks on the fossil-fuel industry?

It’s easy to wonder about the latter, as life stateside is full of people who will give you grief about your Big Mac, your SUV, your gas stove, and now your air conditioning. Meanwhile, these kidnapping, humanitarian-aid-obstructing, cholera-exacerbating Islamists who carried out a “partial and limited reintroduction of slavery” are reenacting the Exxon Valdez spill, and you barely hear a peep from the green crowd. It’s easy to conclude their movement is primarily focused upon hassling you, not about protecting the Earth.

The current president of the United States — that’s Joe Biden if you’ve forgotten. I know it’s easy to forget when he only does one public event per week — has not made any substantive remarks about the threat from the Houthis since January. The Biden administration would probably prefer if you forgot that one of its first actions was to remove the Iranian-backed Houthis from the U.S. list of global terrorist organizations.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller issued a statement Saturday:

The United States is gravely concerned by the Houthis’ attacks against the oil tanker MT DELTA SOUNION. The Houthis’ continued attacks threaten to spill a million barrels of oil into the Red Sea, an amount four times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster. While the crew has been evacuated, the Houthis appear determined to sink the ship and its cargo into the sea.

Through these attacks, the Houthis have made clear they are willing to destroy the fishing industry and regional ecosystems that Yemenis and other communities in the region rely on for their livelihoods, just as they have undermined the delivery of vital humanitarian aid to the region through their reckless attacks. We call on the Houthis to cease these actions immediately and urge other nations to step forward to help avert this environmental disaster.

Don’t get mad at Miller; issuing firmly worded statements is his job. Get mad at everybody above him who’s supposed to create and carry out policies deterring and punishing these sorts of reckless attacks. (For those wondering, the Exxon Valdez spilled 257,000 barrels, or roughly 17 Olympic-sized swimming pools, or 35,000 metric tons. The Greek-flagged oil tanker Sounion is carrying 150,000 metric tons of crude oil.)

Way back in January, after some coalition airstrikes, President Biden said:

Today’s defensive action follows this extensive diplomatic campaign and Houthi rebels’ escalating attacks against commercial vessels. These targeted strikes are a clear message that the United States and our partners will not tolerate attacks on our personnel or allow hostile actors to imperil freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most critical commercial routes. I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.

Hey, how are those “further measures” doing? The only thing we’ve got going for us is that the Houthis don’t always check to see whose ships they’re attacking, and end up shooting ships carrying Russian oil and Chinese goods, even though the terrorists pledged to spare ships from those countries.

Oh, and hey, look who else is benefitting from the Houthis’ turning the Red Sea shipping lanes into the site of the U.S. Navy’s “most intense combat since World War II”:

Freight companies operating between China and Europe are increasingly turning to rail lines that run through Russia as Houthi rebel attacks on ships travelling through the Suez Canal trigger delays and higher costs. The volume of goods transported from China to Europe via the Eurasian Rail Alliance (Era) — a Russian freight company which uses Russian rail lines — has more than doubled since the Red Sea crisis began at the end of last year.

We’re up against an axis of the devils that operates like an international crime syndicate with protection rackets. If Biden insists upon being president until January 20, is it too much to ask that he comes out and talk about these sorts of things once in a while?

The ISS Is Like Hotel California: Check Out Any Time You Like, but . . .

Who’s having the worst 2024: the Chicago White Sox, Ivy League presidents, the Kursk, Russia Regional Chamber of Commerce, or Boeing?

After this weekend, there’s a strong case for Boeing:

NASA announced Saturday that it will use SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to bring home two astronauts stuck in space for months, because the agency does not have confidence in Boeing’s troubled Starliner capsule.

“It was just too much risk for the crew,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager.

The highly anticipated decision, one of the most consequential by the space agency in years, is a devastating blow to Boeing, which had argued vehemently that Starliner was safe even though it suffered a series of thruster problems and helium leaks as it brought NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore to the International Space Station in early June.

The decision means that the autonomous Starliner spacecraft will return to Earth, likely in early September, without anyone on board and that Williams and Wilmore will have their stay on the space station, originally intended to last eight days, extended to about eight months — the next Dragon return flight is scheduled for February.

Eight days? That’s the space equivalent of a three-hour tour. The ISS has turned into Gilligan’s Space Station:

Boeing argued that its engineers understood the problems and said the company “remains confident in the Starliner spacecraft and its ability to return safely with crew.” NASA, however, could not get to a point where its engineers felt they fully understood the problems, even after running several ground tests, analyzing the data and even taking apart hardware on the ground.

Reviews of the data led to “a lot of tense conversations,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations. That will require some fence-mending between the two sides, Bowersox suggested.

In a way, what we saw this weekend was the plan: Way back in 2014, NASA decided to go with two private companies to create low-Earth orbit transportation, so that in case one company’s spacecraft failed, the other company’s system would serve as a backup. Boeing was awarded a $4.2 billion contract, while SpaceX was awarded a $2.6 billion contract.

Still, having to rule that Boeing’s Starliner isn’t safe or reliable enough is an embarrassment for both Boeing and NASA, and it’s not like there weren’t warning signs: “The aerospace contractor projected the capsule would be ready to fly astronauts by the end of 2017. It turns out the Crew Flight Test didn’t launch until June 5, 2024.” Because it was a fixed-price contract, Boeing has had to pay for the $1.6 billion in cost overruns.

NASA could argue that back in 2014, Boeing had a much more reliable reputation. But some might ask whether the senior U.S. government officials who are supposed to be looking over NASA’s shoulder were as attentive as they should have been.

The National Space Council was established in 1989, was “not operational” from 1993 to 2017, and was reestablished during the Trump administration; during the Trump years, the Council met eight times.

Since Biden took office, the National Space Council has held three meetings. The chair of the Council is . . . Vice President Kamala Harris, who pledged to put her “personal stamp” on it. Harris left the third meeting early, leaving her national-security adviser, Phil Gordon, to moderate it.

Now, it’s not reasonable to expect Harris, in one of these roughly once-a-year meetings, to say to NASA administrators, “Hey, have you double-checked the Starliner’s thrusters and also checked for helium leaks in the propulsion system? I’ve just got a bad gut feeling about those systems.” After all, this is indeed literal rocket science. But it still bears pointing out that Harris’s role on the National Space Council is about what cynics would expect: show up, give a speech, and depart, leaving someone else to actually run the meeting.

Oh, and in those remarks, Harris said:

Last year, I issued a global challenge for all nations to join our commitment not to conduct destructive, direct-ascent anti-satellite missile testing. Since then, 36 other nations have joined us, and I continue to urge more nations to do the same.

That sounds impressive at first, but only four countries have demonstrated destructive direct-ascent anti-satellite missile capability: the United States, India, China, and Russia. The U.S. has voluntarily agreed to a unilateral moratorium; India, China, and Russia have refused. So Harris is bragging that a bunch of like-minded or allied countries, like Canada and New Zealand, are promising to not do something that they likely don’t have the capability to do yet anyway, and probably aren’t inclined to do, either. This is just about the nicest way to describe a form of unilateral disarmament.

Elon Musk to the Rescue, Again

Hey, remember when Joe Biden mocked Elon Musk with his, “I am sick . . . of Elon Musk and his rich buddies trying to buy this election” tweets, back on July 17?

Four days later, how did Biden announce he wasn’t seeking another term? Which social-media platform did he use?

And whose company is saving NASA’s bacon, when Boeing fell flat on its face? Ah, that’s right, Elon Musk’s.

A Smaller U.S. Navy in a More Dangerous World

A moment ago, I mentioned that the Red Sea is site of the U.S. Navy’s “most intense combat since World War II.” Earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group “to accelerate its transit to the Central Command area of responsibility” — that is, to move more quickly toward the Middle East as a deterrent to Iran. No doubt the need to send a clear message to Tehran is great, but as a consequence, “This decision left the western Pacific without an operational US carrier for the first time in years.”

And the U.S. fleet is about to get smaller:

Military Sealift Command has drafted a plan to remove the crews from 17 Navy support ships due to a lack of qualified mariners to operate the vessels across the Navy, USNI News learned.

The MSC “force generation reset” identified two Lewis and Clark replenishment ships, one fleet oiler, a dozen Spearhead-class Expeditionary Fast Transports (EPF) and two forward-deployed Navy expeditionary sea bases that would enter an “extended maintenance” period and have their crews retasked to other ships in the fleet, three people familiar with the plan told USNI News Thursday.

Based on the crew requirements on the platforms, sideling all the ships could reduce the civilian mariner demand for MSC by as many as 700 billets.

A defense official confirmed the basic outline of the plan to USNI News on Thursday. Two sources identified the forward-deployed sea bases as USS Lewis Puller (ESB-3), based in Bahrain in U.S. Central Command, and USS Herschel “Woody” Williams (ESB-4), based in Naval Support Activity Souda Bay, Greece, and operated in U.S. European and Africa Command.

The U.S. currently has the smallest active-duty force it has had since 1940; the Biden administration inherited a military with 1,333,822 active-duty personnel in 2020 and now has one with 1,284,500 active-duty personnel, a decline of just under 50,000 personnel in one four-year span.

Back in February, our Luther Ray Abel did an in-depth dive into the problems the U.S. military is having in recruitment. Yes, the perception of a “woke military” and Covid-vaccine requirements were factors, but what most civilians likely don’t realize is that our brave new world of electronic medical records is complicating recruitment — now a potential recruit’s complete medical history is transferred electronically. As Luther described:

Any and every medication a young person has ever received a prescription for, regardless of whether he actually ingested it or how long he took it, can be grounds for rejection. Prescribed Ritalin for ADHD at 16 or Zoloft for managed anxiety? Broke a bone snowboarding that’s since healed? It might be a problem.

See, back in the day (pre-2022), the recruiter would often take a recruit aside before sending the young man to MEPS and say some version of the following: “You have no medical issues, okay? If the doctor who inspects you at MEPS asks if you’ve had surgery, you say ‘No, sir.’ If he asks about the cut on your chest that suggests open-heart surgery, you say it’s a birthmark. You’ve never drunk, smoked pot, or taken the Lord’s name in vain. You are the healthiest American ever beheld by medical science — at least until he sees my next recruit. Good?” Practically every recruit has lied in some capacity to join the military because the standards are absurd, and the series of waivers and records requests to show proof of, and reasons for, treatment can feel never-ending.

An example: I didn’t lie and was shown the door my first time at MEPS because I disclosed to the doctor there that I had been prescribed orthotics (arch supports for the foot) years before — a minor detail that hadn’t come up on the initial screening from the recruiter. Instead of saying, “Oh, no problem,” he ushered me to the front desk and forbade my return until the podiatrist had signed off on the orthotics I hadn’t used in over two years. Months of paperwork later — including a visit to the prescribing podiatrist that, even with a good insurance policy, cost more than $50 — I was cleared to return to MEPS, face the doctor, and pass through to receive a ship date for boot camp. Compare that instance of bureaucratic hoop-jumping with today’s access to a full medication list, and one can see the monumental burden the military has heaped on the applicant and his recruiter. Gone are the days of sidestepping via white lies to present a clean medical record while giving the military plausible deniability. They didn’t ask too intently, and recruits didn’t volunteer extraneous information. The system worked. . . .

What makes the Genesis situation all the more challenging is that the military can’t very well publicize that the records update has harmed recruitment because then the brass would have to admit what anyone who’s served knows: Our 250 years of martial success have come about through bald-faced lies to a medical professional. There’s a proud tradition of patriotic fibs to serve one’s country: JFK, John Boucher, and Gerry Barlow, for instance.

In fiscal year 2021, the U.S. Navy had 301 ships. (Remember the U.S. government’s fiscal year 2021 began in October 2020.) The U.S. Navy currently has 293 ships, and the fleet is on pace to continue shrinking: “The Navy projects that, under the Navy’s proposed FY2025 budget, the total number of ships in the Navy would decline by a net 9 ships during FY2025, from 296 ships at the start of FY2025 to 287 ships at the end of FY2025.”

Meanwhile:

DOD states that China’s navy “is the largest navy in the world with a battle force of over 370 platforms, including major surface combatants, submarines, ocean-going amphibious ships, mine warfare ships, aircraft carriers, and fleet auxiliaries. Notably, this figure does not include approximately 60 HOUBEI-class patrol combatants that carry anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCM). The . . . overall battle force [of China’s navy] is expected to grow to 395 ships by 2025 and 435 ships by 2030.”

Last Thursday night, Kamala Harris stood before the world and pledged, “As vice president, I have confronted threats to our security, negotiated with foreign leaders, strengthened our alliances and engaged with our brave troops overseas. As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”

Where’s she been?

ADDENDUM: As summer approaches its close, I see my latest thriller, Dueling Six Demons, is already up to 62 reviews on Amazon — thanks to everyone for the five-star reviews. The four-star ones . . . eh, okay, thanks, I guess. Three stars or less, keep your opinions to yourself! Seriously, the algorithms love reviews, and so giving your favorite authors a review on Amazon or Goodreads is one of the biggest favors you can do them.