05.07.26
Kamikaze dolphins
The more you know about war, the more there is to hate.
For instance, animal draftees.
The pharaoh Ramses II had a pet lion, who fought alongside him at the Battle of Kadesh. The Romans and Greeks trained dogs to fight in battle; the Spanish conquistadors sicced them on warriors in Peru, Mexico, and the Caribbean. During World War I, not just canaries but also slugs were sacrificed to detect mustard gas in the trenches. Bats have carried bombs, pigeons have served as spies.
As many as 1.5 million horses died in the American Civil War, from war wounds, exhaustion, or starvation. More than 8 million horses, mules, and donkeys died in World War I. They weren’t just schlepping cannons or soldiers; according to Wikipedia, “a knight’s warhorse was trained to bite and kick.”
Most hideously, pigs, rats, monkeys, and chickens have been set afire and launched as explosive devices at the enemy.
Yeah, Nature red in tooth and claw, and all that. But what animal would voluntarily fight and die in a human war?
Specifically, what dolphin?
In a press briefing Tuesday, a reporter asked “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Dan Caine to “clarify reports” about “kamikaze dolphins” being used by Iran as mine detectors. The BBC reported that Iran obtained and trained some dolphins for combat duty in 2000. Even if it did, they’d be too old for service now, says CNN, which also reported that the U.S. military has trained dolphins to detect mines. According to a RAND engineer involved in the training, however, the animals do not detonate the mines and get killed in the process.
“Kamikaze dolphins” sounds, if not exactly oxymoronic, improbable. Dolphins do defend themselves from predators. But if the animal kingdom has conscientious objectors, it would be the dolphins.
Caine said he hadn’t heard about “the kamikaze dolphin thing.” But Hegseth was, as usual, sure of the facts: “I can’t confirm or deny whether we have kamikaze dolphins,” he said, “but they [the Iranians] don’t.”
This was the same briefing at which the men insisted that “Project Freedom,” in which the U.S. intends to break Iran’s blockade and “restart the free flow of commerce through the Strait of Hormuz,” presumably using warships and weapons, is not warfare and is “separate and distinct” from “Operation Epic Fury.” At another press conference the same day, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that Epic Fury, the war, is over anyway, mission accomplished, even thought the U.S. continues to block Iranian ports and Iran is firing missiles and drones throughout the region.
Was Hegseth suggesting that the deployment of dolphins would be a military secret and a decision to be made by the commander-in-chief alone? And did I detect the hint of a smile on his pretty, death-worshiping face when he uttered the words “kamikaze dolphins” — visions of the exploding flesh of these sensitive, intelligent creatures dancing in his head?