Radio communications from the Iranian boats included this:
"We're coming at you and you'll explode in a couple minutes."The Navy ship "issued warnings and attempted to establish communications with the small boats and conducted evasive maneuvering" but no shots were fired, though that point was almost reached.
Military officials characterized this as "an unusually aggressive and direct act by Iran." It was not an ambiguous situation where there were a legitimate error of navigation, bad weather, or crossed signals. It was a provocation.
The U.S. State Department spokesman stated, "Without specific reference to this incident in the Strait of Hormuz, the United States will confront Iranian behavior where it seeks to do harm either to us or to our friends and allies in the region."
Perhaps our next president can issue instructions to punish Iranian behavior that "seeks to do harm" to us. Perhaps he could so far as to punish behavior that actually harms us, such as sending Iranian operatives into Iraq to work against us and shipping in (and employing?) sophisticated munitions that actually do kill and are killing U.S. troops in Iraq.
Is there any doubt that Iran is a terrorist state? Does Iranian terrorism actually harm us, or not?
Mr. Bush hasn't seemed to have figured out the answer to that question yet.
Maybe the electronics of U.S. Navy ships can actually handle a missile launched within spit ball range so this kind of maneuvering poses no actual threat. That's hardly the point, however. There's an issue of respect here. Attempting deliberately to jerk around valuable U.S. naval assets is something that should result in the teaching of an object lesson to any nation that thinks it can do so and not suffer some kind of a consequence. Beyond the dreaded consequence of being confronted, I mean.
I can understand the utility of a little ambiguity as to what will trigger a forceful response in any particular situation. But, this is just the same weak kneed response we've always had to the Iranians beginning with the hostage crisis during the Carter Reign of Error. I've searched my memory for some synaptic record of where we ever exacted any kind of a penalty for Iranian barbarism and found none.
I can only hope that some kind of educational back channel message has already winged its way to Holy Islamic 12th Imam Revolutionary Foreign Ministry. But I doubt it has or will. Perhaps we could concoct a Gulf of Tonkin-like incident of Mr. Ahmadinejad's engaging in hate speech. God help the Iranians then.
Why not make the post-modern hierarchy of crimes against humanity serve the cause of national self preservation?
"White House calls naval face-off 'provocative'." By Sara A. Carter, Washington Times, 1/8/08 (emphasis added).
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