In the latest episode of America's Long Retreat, the reincarnation of Dwight D. Eisenhower has gotten spanked in the Red Sea.

One on butt cheek, they have been hit by Yemen. On May 31st, Yemeni spokesman Yahya Saree Telegram'd that, “the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out a joint military operation targeting the American aircraft carrier “Eisenhower” in the Red Sea. The operation was carried out with a number of winged and ballistic missiles, the hit was Accurate and direct, thanks to Allah.” The next day, they hit Ike again. The US denied but I trust Saree because, unlike the White Empire, the Resistance has never lied to me. And the Eisenhower slunk off, and went quiet.

On the other butt-cheek, America just hit themselves, they've been into budgetary BDSM for decades. They parked a bunch of depreciating assets near unappreciative natives and, surprise surprise, they got shot at. America can shoot these missiles down, but by throwing Lamborghinis and Patek Phillipes at them. Insanely expensive and low-production bespoke missiles they can only reload in certain ports. Meanwhile they're sitting ducks in the Red Sea, knowing that at any time their enemies can just overload them. Yemen, Hezbollah, Iran, the US fleet is in range of everyone, and everyone is laughing at them. Operation Prosperity Guardian my ass. After they deployed, they made shipping worse.

The sailing reputation of the US Navy has been tarred and feathered in the Red Sea. They're getting ridden out on a rail in front of the whole Arab World. It's the Suez Crisis all over, except Britain actually had a Pyrrhic victory for a moment. America's just had L after L in the Red Sea. They tried suing for peace even, and got ignored cause Yemen just wants the genocide to stop.

In the Battle of The Red Sea, it actually doesn't matter whether Ansarallah scored direct hits or not. The fact is that the Eisenhower turned tail and ran. This has been the law of battle since humans had tails. The loser runs, since time immemorial and, for whatever reason, Ike had to run.

In fact, the whole US military is visibly in retreat now, all over the world, covered by a massive smokescreen of propaganda and proxy armies. We discussed the US Army's retreat from Afghanistan before and its failure to take the field in Ukraine at all. The White Empire is showing its tail to everyone, and spinning tales about it. But tales, unlike tails, can be unspun.

If you read boring accounting reports and history—as I'll recount here—you can see that the White Empire is not re-establishing hegemony. They are violently hemorrhaging power all over the world, most notably in the Red Sea. You can tell from all the blood, especially the blood of innocent children (because the Empire hates a future without it). You can also tell from the absence of Empire, the places it simply can't show up (like Ukraine), or has to retreat from (like Afghanistan, or the Red Sea). Joe Biden is a good representative of America. They're both visibly dying and should go home.

The story of US Naval Collapse is deep (just read any INSURV report), but herein I'll focus on the superficial attack on its flagship the USS Eisenhower (CVN 69). This attack tells the whole story in microcosm. Mashallah, the greatest naval power in the world has been defeated by a people without a navy. All credit to the free people of Yemen, Ansarallah, and Allah. They have defeated the US Navy in the Red Sea.

Historical Preamble

As I discussed in my general theory of empires, many empires conquer land, but colonial empires are distinguished by conquering (and militarizing) the sea. They move guns one way and loot the other way and that basically defines the whole colonial enterprise. It's basically piracy. This was the racket the US inherited from the British after World War II.

World War II was defined by the USSR fighting to preserve itself and the Western Allies fighting to preserve their empire. As Andrei Martyanov said, “Preserving its Empire superseded Britain’s concern with bearing a fair share of the Allied war effort, and seeing the Nazis, with whom many in the British elite had sympathy, bleed the USSR, was not an anathema.” As then US Senator Harry Truman said, “If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.”

The proof is in the blood pudding. Tens of millions of Soviets died destroying 80% of the German Army while the Allies were tooling around with irrelevant 'fronts' like North Africa. Just an excuse to secure imperial territory, especially around the Middle Eastern oil fields. The US certainly helped Russia with lend-lease, but more important was the British lend-lease program, in which America took British bases as collateral. Britain, in fact, surrendered territory to America to avoid Germany, and remains America's bitches to this day. They have relentlessly propagandized their own people so much that Britain thinks they won World War II, but the UK is just another illusory flag in the real White Empire. To us on the bottom of the boot in the Global South, it's all one phenomenon. America is just the latest headquarters of the same joint stock companies that broke our joints and put us in stockades centuries ago.

I give this long preamble not to ramble but to point out the historical currents we're merely circling. Down the train, ultimately. The Middle East is the literal middle of the maritime world, connecting the ancient Mediterranean and monsoon trade routes through the modern Suez Canal. It was the center of British power until they lost it in the Suez Crisis and it was the center of American power until they lost it now. Now the center cannot hold, the falcon cannot hear the falconer, you know how it goes. Mere 'chaos' is unleashed upon the world, which is just the white man's word for freedom.

Maximum Amble

America made a big show about securing the Red Sea, sending a carrier group and gathering a few (mainly) Europeans for a murder cruise. But free Yemen has slapped them all silly, in front of the whole world.

It's increasingly obvious that America's naval empire has no clothes because Yemen pulled off its fig leaf, the USS Eisenhower. The Eisenhower recently fled the fuck away from Yemen (we'll get to that) and you can see it here doing exercises with the Italian ship ITS Cavour. As you can see next to its Italian friend, the Eisenhower looks like shit. The rust pattern on its port hull even looks like an inverted Yemeni flag, lol. The most iron of ironies.

The commander of the Eisenhower is an absolute moron named Chris “Chowdah” Hill who hands out cookies to debt slaves that can't go home. Their term keeps getting extended, which is not compensated for by endless Taco Tuesdays. With his photo ops in lieu of serious operations, Chowdah unintentionally communicates the actual state of the US military, which is completely unserious. Chowdah quite unironically posted this a few days ago:

Another 23-yr old nuclear reactor operator was called to the bridge today. He’s from San Antonio, TX and manages months at sea by “taking every day one at a time.” His grandpa literally served on the IKE and did the same exact job as him! How wild is that?

Yes, how wild is that indeed. The grandchildren of the first crew are serving on the same vessel and the Captain of the Good Ship Cookieshop thinks that's a good thing. It just shows how insanely old and outdated the US flagship is. The dying USS Eisenhower scares anyone about as much as dead Dwight D. Eisenhower does. They're both artifacts from last century.

Trying to impress anyone with the USS Eisenhower in 2024 is like pulling up to the club in a 1977 Lincoln Continental. And not a pimped out Lincoln, but one that's been driving through salt-water for nearly 50 years with poor maintenance. Let me zoom in on the Yemen tagged vessel here:

This thing is a rust bucket. The Eisenhower is like the rest of America's infrastructure. Crumbling. Their roads, railroads, and sea roads are just physically falling apart. Concrete and steel aren't alchemy, they physically depreciate in 30–40 years. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Eisenhower has a physical end of life, scheduled for 2027, but they keep extending it, like they can extend physics. This USS Eisenhower should be in the retirement home, not bombing homes.

Worse than just age, the entire US fleet has been badly maintained. Every time INSURV (the JAG of auditors) releases a report, the condition of the fleet gets worse. They report this about aircraft carriers (CVN) in general:

This Eisenhower, in particular, has been ‘ridden hard and put away wet,’ as the cowboys say. I can't find the Eisenhower (CVN 69)'s material inspection report but you can learn a lot from the maintenance schedule. Ike's innards were last inspected (to great fanfare) in 2016, after a gap of 10 years and 1,400 days at sea. This is way beyond spec.

By law (Title 10), every ship is supposed to be inspected every three years. The Eisenhower is six years overdue for its last inspection. In fact, nearly half of the entire fleet is overdue. As the latest INSURV report says, “As of 30 September 2022, there were 154 of 353 (43.6%) vessels, subject to inspection, that exceeded a 3-year inspection periodicity.” Which is to say half the fleet is missing regular maintenance, and none of it's in good shape. And all INSURV reports is the bare minimum. They report ‘does it have a gun?’ but not vital stuff like ‘does the gun fire?’ These auditors just kick the tires, they don't report combat drills, like whether the signal goes from the radar to the guns, etc. The total budget for the report is listed as $3,200 lol.

INSURV does do 'demonstrations,' but it pointedly doesn't include them in the public report. As they say, “INSURV conducts demonstrations to determine the
effectiveness of integrated systems in an operational environment. While these demonstrations are graded, the scores are not factored into the ship's IFOM. However, deficiencies that arise from the demonstrations do affect the calculus of the associated functional.”

IFOM is just another military acronym that means ‘How Fucked Are We?’ The answer is very fucked.

To return to the still homicidal re-incarnation of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the CVN 69 is the second-oldest aircraft carrier in the fleet. It has also been the busiest carrier in the fleet for five years now. It hasn't announced an inspection for 9 years, which is very bad for billions worth of machinery. Worst of all, it's 9 months into a 7-month deployment, after which the CHECK ENGINE light comes on and you need to service the thing. The corrupt Raytheon stooge running the Defense Department keeps extending the Eisenhower's deployment for 'strategic reasons' but machinery gives a fuck about your strategy. Depreciation is the silent killer and he's already on board.

There's one lesson I learned long ago, which I'll repeat because it was once news to me. You have to maintain vehicles or they fall apart. Any time and money you save in the short term is lost forever when the thing just falls apart. I only took my first car (in Sri Lanka) to the shop when it broke down. I was living my best life, driving a compact car through national parks, driving it on the beach in the hot sun, etc. Then—when Sri Lanka built its first highway—I took the old Vitz out for a spin and the engine just melted. All those years of 'technical debt' came due all at once. I learned the hard way, if you don't do regular car maintenance, you're guaranteed car trouble.

When I got married things were different. My wife came with a dowry (I joke) of two big dogs and a car. Once the dogs fought inside the car and spilled out onto Park Road, where a crowd gathered to watch and futilely splash water on the bloody, idiotic animals. The car was family maintained, meaning I couldn't ruin it with my usual death by negligence. Every seven months the driver would just take the car and disappear for a day or two. It was annoying and it cost a bunch of money for seemingly nothing, but 11 years later that car is still running, and running well. And the jeep was old to start with, it has 165,000 km on it. That's the power of maintenance. It lets you reach the true lifetime of a vehicle, and even extend it.

An aircraft carrier is really a floating vehicle with millions of other machines on it, all of which need maintenance. Also thousands of people, who are not magically revived by cookies. The iron law is that if you don't take care of your machines, your machines won't take care of you. And the Eisenhower is simply not fit for purpose. As its retreat from the Red Sea has shown.

The Battle Of The Red Sea

On May 31s, Yahya Saree, the military spokesman of Ansarallah, (who has never lied to me) said (via Telegram):

[American-British] airstrikes have caused damage to the Hodeidah Radio building, as well as the Coast Guard building in the port of Saleef, in addition to a number of commercial ships in the port. This represents a clear targeting of civilian objects, a blatant violation of all international laws, and a full-fledged war crime.

Therefore....

In response to these crimes, and within the right to of respond to the American-British aggression, and in continuation of truimphing over the oppression of the Palestinian people, the missile force and the naval force of the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out a joint military operation targeting the American aircraft carrier “Eisenhower” in the Red Sea. The operation was carried out with a number of winged and ballistic missiles, the hit was Accurate and direct, thanks to Allah.

Then the next day they hit the Eisenhower again. As Saree said (Telegram):

The naval forces, the missile force, and the unmanned air force of the Yemeni armed forces, with the help of God Almighty, carried out six military operations as follows: The first targeted the US aircraft carrier Eisenhower in the northern Red Sea with a number of missiles and drones, which is the second targeting of the carrier within 24 hours. The second targeted an American destroyer in the Red Sea and was directly hit by a number of drones.

After this, the US government (which has always lied to me) said there was no damage, but nonetheless started to leave the are. Then that moron Captain Chowdah reposted an old Instagram reel of the deck like no one would notice, except of course they did, adding mystery to mayhem. I believe Yemen—but for my thesis—whether or not the Eisenhower was hit is actually irrelevant. I believe Saree, but seeing is ultimately believing. And everyone can see the Eisenhower fleeing, and going quiet.

My broader point in these essays is that the loss of the US military is visible through its absence. It's furiously throwing proxy armies in front of it to cover what is actually a full-blown retreat. Thus my earlier point was that US Army has lost by its absence in Ukraine (it's too scared). The current point is that USS Eisenhower has lost by its absence in the Red Sea.

Remember that this is a ship which can only reload certain munitions in Newport News. This is an old ship that has been overused and is now two months late for its minimum maintenance. Buried in the propaganda, you can see how heavy the battle has been.

According to Lt. Cmdr. Lauren Chatmas, the strike group’s aircraft have flown more than 12,100 sorties, totaling over 27,200 flight hours, and they’ve launched more than 350 air-to-surface weapons and more than 50 air-to-air missiles. The warships have each traveled more than 55,000 miles, and they’ve launched more than 100 Standard and Tomahawk missiles. In all, the strike group has gone after about 430 either pre-planned or dynamic targets in its mission to defend U.S., coalition and merchant ships.

I won't even get into the point that the mission has failed, and that the Americans have reduced traffic in the Red Sea since they militarized it. Just look at the amount of ordnance the Eisenhower has lost. They fired ‘more than 100 Standard and Tomahawk missiles.’ Well, the entire US Tomahawk order for 2023 was 55. And they cost $1 million each. And the factories to build more don't really exist. Across every category of artillery, America is simply running out of bullets, including sea artillery.

America keeps announcing bigger and bigger military budgets, but they're just advertising their own mounting corruption. It's made up money chasing shut-down factories. The Pentagon is literally unauditable and the US military cannot procure anything. They don't even make these ships anymore, and they'd require Chinese resources to attack China it. America has long been the gang that can't shoot straight, and now they're just running out of parts and ammunition.

Whether Yemen hits the Eisenhower or not, its physical presence in the Red Sea is just not physically sustainable. For example, the US Navy cannot physically reload its (8os era) MK 41 Vertical Launch System at sea. For other munitions and supplies it has to go all the way back to Newport News, in America. The USS Eisenhower stormed in the Red Sea like Scarface, screaming “OK, I'm reloaded!” OK, but then what? You have to reload again and again in war, otherwise you just end up like Scarface, face-down and floating. This is why they're limping back to port now, irregardless of Yemen spanking them.

The truth is that an aging aircraft carrier is more of a liability than an asset now. The more the Ike tries to swing at Yemen, the more it exhausts its finite resources. Yemen was going to hit it at some point, and now that point has come. The Eisenhower's terminally online Captain just made things even worse with a clumsy cover-up. The lie that everything is fine is peddled by privatized propaganda outlets in the west, but the rest of the world (especially the Arab world) isn't buying it. Those are the people the ghost of Eisenhower was supposed to intimidate, but they're just laughing now, which an Empire based on terrorizing everyone into submission can't afford. Now America's bluff has been called.

America has now lost on land to Afghanistan and on sea to Yemen. They keep picking on the poorest people in the world, and getting their asses handed to them. When you're trying to project power, this is not a good look.

Suez Crisis Part Deux

In a sign of how much we are circling the drain this isn't the first humiliation in the same place. It's all just a little bit of history repeating. As the historian Rashid Khalidi said about the Suez Crisis that official ended British hegemony:

Suez also gave a final push to the tottering hegemony over the Arab world which Britain and France had sometimes shared and sometimes disputed for over a century. It exposed their weaknesses, encouraging Iraqis, Algerians, Adenis, and others to liquidate their last footholds in the region. Arab leaders ceased paying attention to London and Paris, turning instead towards Cairo, Washington, and Moscow. Finally, because it involved Israel in overt collaboration with the old imperial powers, and in an invasion of the territory of an existing Arab state, the Suez crisis established an image of Israel in the Arab world, and a pattern of conflict with it, which had an impact perhaps as important as that of the 1948 war.

They say history repeats, but in this case, I'd say it's one historical process. The turd state of 'Israel' just requires a double-flush. So here we are again, with Yemen taking the place of Egypt as decolonial plumber, and American hegemony going down the drain.

The whole reason for this battle is, in fact, unreasonable from the American side. Yemen's only demand is that 'Israel' stop the genocide. America stepped in to support genocide and, in classic American fashion, made things worse for themselves and their vassals in the process. Now all imperial ships are blocked and shipping rates (especially for the idiots in Europe) are skyrocketing. America took a limited blockade of 'Israel' and turned it into their own funeral, which Europe got the bill for. Couldn't happen to worse people.

Now the US Navy, whose entire modus operandi is securing the seas for imperial trade, can't even secure its own ships. In just the most obvious example, the USS Eisenhower has literally blown its load and has to pull back. This is a lesson literally every counter-insurgent for the last 50 years has learned, that you can just wait the Americans out. The Americans may have the watches, but the natives have the time, as the Taliban said. Yemen has just applied the lesson at sea.

Insurgents know that the Americans will kill children, but that in battles against men, they always retreat. Since Vietnam, through Afghanistan, and now in both Ukraine and Palestine at once. Now the loss of the Red Sea is America's Suez Crisis, their prestige will not recover after this. Its aircraft carriers will die of old age in a decade or so and it can't build them anymore. They lose by default, whatever Yemen does, and Yemen is doing a lot. They're incredibly strategic and innovative, and have the added advantage of fighting a naval battle from land. Hitting the USS Eisenhower with a few drones is nothing militarily, but historically it's a whole page turning.

In their valiant and honorable defense of Palestine, Yemen have dealt the US Navy a fatal blow to their prestige, without even having a Navy. Through sheer missile power and what Scarface called 'balls', the free men of Yemen have sent the USS Eisenhower slinking over the horizon, the crown asset of a clown Navy. There's no coming back from this for America. This is their Suez Crisis moment. The US Navy has been defeated the Red Sea.