What happens when a violent enemy attacks you through its proxies and then threatens you directly, but you do little or nothing about it?
The answer, of course, is that your violent enemy escalates.
With that in mind, here are a series of excerpts from today’s editorial in the New York Post which tell the story all too clearly:
For all President Biden’s desperate desire to avoid “escalation” in the Middle East, US forces on Sunday sank three Houthi boats trying to hijack a freighter in the Red Sea, killing multiple terrorists — or pirates, if you prefer.
And the Houthis’ sponsor, Iran, pointedly sent a warship into the sea on Monday while a top Iranian security official, Ali Akbar Ahmadian, met Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam, praising the terror group’s “brave actions” against “Zionist aggression.”
Meanwhile, US and UK officials are huddling about issuing a formal warning to the Houthis: If they keep up their Red Sea attacks (which already have many companies avoiding the straits through which pass 12%-15% of the world’s shipping), Western forces will retaliate against Houthi bases on land.
Biden’s fears of escalation are also why the US military has barely responded to roughly 200 attacks on American forces across the Mideast by the Houthis and other Iranian proxies since Hamas reopened its war on Israel with the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Iran and its pawns know Biden’s fears all too well; they’re toying with him, knowing their escalations will make him ever more nervous about backing Israel in its war against Hamas.
It’s a deadly game of cat-and-mouse — except these mice believe they can scare the cat right out of the “house,” and so far he’s given them every reason to keep trying.
Yes, Joe Biden has talked a very good game about support for Israel, and has been strong enough to allow Israel to get significant weaponry from the United States.
But this is the also the same Joe Biden who not only has backed off as US assets are attacked over and over again, he is the same Joe Biden who made good and sure enough funds were made available/unfrozen for Iran to finance the terrorist operations described in The Post’s editorial.
You give that kind of latitude/those kinds of mixed messages to a violent enemy, and the violent enemy, encouraged by your inaction, will escalate. It is an old story, but one that the doddering Joe Biden and his puppeteers apparently can’t figure out.
What happens when one of these attacks kills members of our armed forces, maybe a lot of them? What happens if the attack is facilitated, or directly conducted by that Irani warship? And what happens if other countries join in? What do we do then?
I hope you are as worried about these possibilities as I am. Because we have damn good reasons for worrying.
