You want a perfect example of just how dangerous the "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality is? I'll give you an example, courtesy of The Navy Times (and via TPM):
The threatening radio transmission heard at the end of a video showing harassing maneuvers by Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz may have come from a locally famous heckler known among ship drivers as the “Filipino Monkey.”...
In recent years, American ships operating in the Middle East have had to contend with a mysterious but profane voice known by the ethnically insulting handle of “Filipino Monkey,” likely more than one person, who listens in on ship-to-ship radio traffic and then jumps on the net shouting insults and jabbering vile epithets.Navy women — a helicopter pilot hailing a tanker, for example — who are overheard on the radio are said to suffer particularly degrading treatment.
Several Navy ship drivers interviewed by Navy Times are raising the possibility that the Monkey, or an imitator, was indeed featured in that video.
Rick Hoffman, a retired captain who commanded the cruiser Hue City and spent many of his 17 years at sea in the Gulf was subject to the renegade radio talker repeatedly, often without pause during the so-called “Tanker Wars” of the late 1980s.
“For 25 years there’s been this mythical guy out there who, hour after hour, shouts obscenities and threats,” he said. “He could be tied up pierside somewhere or he could be on the bridge of a merchant ship.”
And the Monkey has stamina.
“He used to go all night long. The guy is crazy,” he said. “But who knows how many Filipino Monkeys there are? Could it have been a spurious transmission? Absolutely.”
...He said he and others believe that the Filipino Monkey is comprised of several people, and whoever gets on Channel 16 to heckle instantly gets the monicker.
“It was just a gut feeling, something the merchants did. Guys would get bored, one guy hears it, comes back a year later and does it for himself,” he said. “I never thought it was one, rather it was part of the woodwork.”
The former skipper noted that he warned his crew about hecklers when preparing to transit Hormuz. “I tell them they’ll hear things on there that will be insulting,” he said. “You tell your people that you’ll hear things that are strange, insulting, aggravating, but you need to maintain a professional posture.”
A civilian mariner with experience in that region said the Filipino Monkey phenomenon is worldwide, and has been going on for years.
“They come on and say ‘Filipino Monkey’ in a strange voice. They might say it two or three times. You’re standing watch on bridge and you’re monitoring Channel 16 and all of a sudden it comes over the radio. It can happen anytime. It’s been a joke out there for years.”
Paul Kiel describes this as "bizarre," but I don't think so. It's just the opposite, in fact. This is precisely the sort of thing I'd expect to find in this environment. Naval traditions all over the world are filled with this kind of stuff.
Now let's be clear about this. US Navy ships operating in international waters have every right to do whatever is necessary to defend themselves, and based on everything we know here, they acted entirely appropriately given the circumstances they faced. That's now what I (or anyone else that I know of) have taken issue with.
No, the problem isn't with the Navy. The problem is with the way this has been handled politically. Releasing the tape without providing a full explanation, including these sorts of very important details, turns what we now know was a very minor incident into an enormous one. Unless your goal is to increase the likelihood of a serious military confrontation, there's nothing to gain by handling the incident this way. And by nothing, I mean nothing.
It's hard enough for our Navy to operate in the Straits of Hormuz, and there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to make their job any harder. But that's precisely what this does. And the world is already a dangerous enough place, so there's no reason whatsoever to purposely do things that make it more dangerous. And again, that's precisely what this does. And last but not least, the credibility of of both this administration and our intelligence services is already damaged enough, so there's no reason to do things that make them look even more incompetent. And yet... that's precisely what this does.
When will these people learn? You can't create your own facts. The truth eventually finds its way to the light.
Subscribe to this blog's feed
