Is the outrage over leaked war plans normal?

For behind all imperialism is ultimately the imperialistic individual, just as behind all peace is ultimately the peaceful individual.

– Irving Babbitt

When the host of a TV talk show dedicated to serving up healthy doses of conspiracy theories as a pre-breakfast snack is appointed as the country’s Secretary of Defense, the stage is set for something stupid to happen.

And it did, hilariously so, depending on which side of the artificially created cultural divisions you are on.

Earlier this month, Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary in question, was part of a private chat group on the Signal platform that accidentally leaked highly classified information on military strikes that were later carried out against the Houthis in Yemen. While Hegseth wasn’t the offender who inadvertently admitted Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat, he remains accountable for safeguarding defence-related information.

The other members of the Make America Bomb Another Country Again chat group were the obnoxious Vice President J D Vance, Senior Policy Advisor Stephen Miller, who has the dead eyes and compassion of a serial killer, Secretary of State and Dubious Deportations Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz who, in an act antithetical to his job function, added the journalist to the group, CIA Director John Ratcliffe who I’d prefer not to antagonize too much at this stage for er… security reasons (mine), and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard whose credentials as a seasoned Warhawk no doubt sealed her membership of MABACA.

The contributions of these other members, apart from the unfortunate Mike Waltz, were of little consequence. Collectively, they only strengthened social media’s caricature of them as sycophants with questionable competence, as the (stolen) meme below demonstrates. Ironically, Donald Trump, the architect of the MAGA shitshow and his chainsaw-wielding DOGE sidekick, Elon Musk are missing from this particular shopping trolley of gratuitous bungling.

The fallout inside America and internationally was predictable. We are currently still in the outrage phase. The recriminations, evasiveness, denials and threats are still to come. My consternation, however, concerns the public outrage within America. While this outrage is immediately recognizable as hypocritical, it confirms an oft-overlooked detail of American culture and psyche, as alluded to in the pinned quote by Irving Babbitt.

Apart from the incident being an embarrassment to  Americans who are invested in patriotism, none of the culprits in the chat group strike me as being capable of shame, considering the pitiful shadow of a human being they’ve chosen to fawn over and venerate. Indeed, I have little doubt that they will close ranks and try to slither their way out of this mess.

While following the outrage over the leaked war plans across multiple media outlets, one missing element has been bugging me greatly. Where is all these media outlets’ outrage for the objective of those war plans? The bombing of Yemen, which is still ongoing as I write, has killed at least 79 people, including children, in residential neighborhoods. Why is everyone so concerned about the leaked war plans and not about the outcome that those plans were meant to achieve?

Are Americans so enamoured of their country’s defensive capabilities that they are blind to the death, destruction and misery that it routinely causes around the world? Is this naive patriotism or blind, calculated allegiance to the nation’s imperialist aims? Americans treat their military veterans with unparalleled deference. Is warmongering inbuilt into the American psyche? Surely, it can’t be as baked-in as in Israel, where every citizen is a potential soldier mandated by law to defend their country’s heinous policies.

At least one independent journalist believes that militarism is ingrained in Western society. It’s probably the reason why American imperialism has been so successful and destructive for so long. Caitlin Johnstone wrote recently in her Substack newsletter that:

The west has always been a warmongering, genocidal civilization driven by conquest and domination, and the western settler-colonialist project of Israel is just one more manifestation of the dystopia we are living in.

The leaking of information about planned acts of war, while taken seriously within America, is hilarious to an outside world who are constantly the victim of these savage and inhumane acts. The farce currently playing out in the Trump administration is a source of amusement and joy. It ushers in hope for change and the alleviation of perpetual suffering at the hands of this deviant nation.