U.S. Navy's "Houthi Hunting Club"
Pentagon removed this photo in embarrassment
This week, when I shared an official Defense Department photo depicting a lieutenant wearing a uniform shoulder patch that reads “HOUTHI HUNTING CLUB / RED SEA 2024,” I didn’t think anyone would care.
Boy was I wrong.
Shortly after I posted the photo to our news account on X, it went viral. Hundreds of users expressed outrage at not just the lack of professionalism, but the military’s conceited attitude about a war that arguably they are losing against a far weaker enemy.
Apparently this was all too embarrassing for the Defense Department, which on Friday removed the photo without explanation. (The Navy did not respond to my request for comment.) I’ve included a screenshot of the original webpage below; you can also still find the patches being sold online.
“The US Navy give themselves a badge depicting the Houthis as sand people from Star Wars, meanwhile their attempt at ending their blockade in the Red Sea has failed so badly that the Houthis expanded their operations into the Mediterranean and attacked Tel Aviv with drones,” cracked independent journalist
. “Is an international coalition considered a success where the enemy you're fighting is firing at ships in the Arabian Sea in January and is launching a hypersonic missile at Ben-Gurion Airport to target Netanyahu by September?”Some of the funnier replies:
“They've lost multiple times to a bunch of line-dancing gun nuts wearing dresses,” said @rein_amarillo.
“They get patches for embarrassing defeats? That’s worse than a participation trophy,” said @buddhauap.
“Is there a pride patch for grounding a dozen ships? Or no?” said @rightpricevic.
U.S. troops themselves have described the situation as a shit show in which they were ill-prepared for the Houthis to fire at them. "I don't think anybody on board that carrier strike group was expecting that to happen,” Lt. Cmdr. Charity Somma told CBS News in July, referring to a Houthi missile attack on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group.
“I’ll be honest, it was a little traumatizing for the group,” Navy pilot Cmdr. Benjamin Orloff also told the press. Previously, the wife of a Navy lieutenant commander reportedly said that she had expected her husband to have “a fun deployment where he’s going to get lots of ports to visit.”
Though the vast majority of social media comments on the patches focused on their racism and dehumanization, there’s also another important observation to make. The military is notorious for its felicitous attitude — during the Cold War there were lots of patches, official and unofficial, with mushroom clouds and flippant mottos. What the Houthi patch is also saying is that war looks very different from where the fighting’s happening than it does from the desks in Washington.
The accounts by any soldiers or sailors actually participating in the fighting for good reason bears little resemblance to the story told by the Pentagon brass. High-ranking leaders and Pentagon gas bags are constantly touting the success of military operations in “deterring” and “degrading” the Houthis. The results don’t seem to matter to these high-ups. In July, the Defense Intelligence Agency reported that “container shipping through the Red Sea has declined by approximately 90% since last year” as a result of the dozens of Houthi attacks on commercial ships. And now, the Houthis are continuing to fire missiles and drones at Israel, while there are rumors that U.S. Navy ships are avoiding the Yemeni coast because of the dangers.
Compare the dire reality with the triumphalist tone Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin took in a statement last month after wildly expensive stealth bombers were used to attack Houthi targets in Yemen.
“This was a unique demonstration of the United States' ability to target facilities that our adversaries seek to keep out of reach, no matter how deeply buried underground, hardened, or fortified. The employment of U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit long-range stealth bombers demonstrate U.S. global strike capabilities to take action against these targets when necessary, anytime, anywhere.”
Unique demonstration? The U.S. has been attacking the Houthis for years now; I’ve lost count of how many times. The standing desk crowd in Washington doesn’t have to face the reality on the ground, in part because the news media doesn’t call them on their bullshit. Reporters climb aboard — literally — and see these patches and other macho displays that would seem strange to civilians. But they don’t report on it because they fear it might be “disrespectful” of the armed services, or more precisely because saying anything off script might result in the reporter losing access.
What the troops know that Washington doesn’t is that two decades of Middle East non-wars have produced very little. Ordinary service members haven’t inhumanely reduced it down to a head-hunting shooting gallery arcade — four successful presidential administrations have. Too often the troops are merely fodder to carry out some Harvard Kennedy School of Government geopolitical fantasy or to fill some industrial pot of gold. Macho displays like the patch notwithstanding, the real villains here are in Washington.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
It’s all fun and games until the enemy starts taking shot at you…..
Thanks Ken, I saw on X and commented on the racist and ethnocentric patch as did others.