Category Archives: defense policy

A Critical Item

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on the right track. In his Christmas Wall Street Journal op-ed, he laid out Israel’s three criteria for achieving real peace in the Gaza Strip:

Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarized, and Palestinian society must be deradicalized. These are the three prerequisites for peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors in Gaza.

Netanyahu is well down the right track, but I disagree with him to a slight extent.

The destruction of Hamas (and of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, I add) is the Critical Item in this trio, and so it is the sole prerequisite to peace in and with the Gaza Strip. Without this, the other two, necessary as they also are, become irrelevant.

Gaza will never be demilitarized so long as the terrorist organizations exist.

It is possible to deradicalize Palestinian society, but that at best will be a multi-generational task—and the Palestinians themselves must be willing, beginning with their letting go of their deeply emotional hatred of all things Jewish.

A Biden Administration Oxymoron

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OK, another Biden administration oxymoron. This one is the latest to deprecate our national security and to not favorably impress our friends and allies. William Luti (Captain, USN Ret, and Hudson Institute Adjunct Fellow), got right to it in the lede of his Christmas Wall Street Journal op-ed, quoting, as he did there, Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh:

We’re not in an armed conflict with the Houthis…part of why we are in the region is to bolster our deterrence.

Because doing nothing in response to several multiples of overt attacks on US facilities, both military and civilian, deters the hell out of Iran and its terrorist satraps. It sure does: it deters the hell out of Iranian and terrorist restraint, and it declares open season on American facilities and on international shipping in international waters.

Contrary to the fetid imaginings of Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden and his syndicate cronies SecDef Lloyd Austin and SecState Antony Blinken, actual deterrence includes, as Critical Items, actually shooting and killing those who attack us and our friends and allies.

Proper deterrence in the present case, real deterrence, would begin (not end) with destroying the two ports the Houthi terrorists have on the Red Sea and destroying the terrorists’ launch facilities inland. Proper deterrence would continue with the destruction of Iran’s ports on the Arabian Gulf, Hormuz Strait, and Gulf of Oman, which would limit the terrorist state’s ability to resupply its satrap in Yemen.

Proper deterrence would extend to destroying the attackers’ facilities in Syria and Iraq, limiting Iran’s satraps there. It would extend further to destroying Iran’s Ho Chi Minh Trail analog that runs from northwestern Iran through northern Iraq into Syria.

Deterrence does not consist of shooting down drones and rockets as the sum total. That just tells the terrorists that they’re down at the neighborhood gun range, practicing their shooting.

Luti described President Ronald Reagan’s response to an earlier Iranian attack, concluding his description with this:

As other Enterprise air-wing aircraft began their bombing runs, Reagan called off the attack after Joint Chiefs Chairman William Crowe said, “We’ve shed enough blood for one day.”

That was 35 years ago. Our enemies have gotten even worse. We won’t have done enough enemy blood shedding until those terrorist facilities are erased and Iran’s ability to resupply its satraps eliminated.

It’s time the Biden syndicate recognized the nature and the depth and breadth of the war that our enemies are inflicting on us and responded accordingly.

Responsibility and Carping

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A couple of letter writers in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal‘s Letters section have some remarks about the way Israel is (trying to) prosecute its defense against Hamas’ war of extermination.

First is the Progressive-Democrat Congressman from Massachusetts, Seth Moulton. He so-piously wrapped himself in his status as a veteran and a US Marine to decry the Gaza civilian casualties occurring as Israel fights to defend itself. In his bellyaching about those casualties, he implies that they are the result of IDF action. He very carefully, though, ignores the fact that those casualties are inflicted on Gaza’s civilians by Hamas directly, as those terrorists shoot the civilians who are trying to leave the combat zone, especially including those proximate targets that the IDF routinely is at pains to identify beforehand so those civilians could otherwise depart.

Moulton further carefully ignores the fact that Hamas inflicts those casualties indirectly by placing their weapons caches, their rocket and missile launchers, and their command centers inside Gazans’ residential buildings, schools, and hospitals.

Moulton, perhaps even more despicably, provides no evidence whatsoever to support his contention that the IDF isn’t doing enough to protect the civilians even as it tries to pick out the terrorist immersing himself in the civilian crowd.

Israel certainly is responsible for its actions. So is Hamas. Carping from safety, by anyone, is not responsible action.

On the other hand, a letter-writer from outside the Progressive-Democrat Beltway Bubble, Paul Mertis of Atlanta, pointed out these items, contradicting Moulton:

[Biden to Netanyahu:] “There was no reason why we had to be in a war in Afghanistan at 9/11. There was no reason why we had to do some of the things we did.” Perhaps Mr Biden should be reminded that while it is approximately 7,000 miles from Washington to Kabul, Gaza borders Israel.

To which I add, regarding Biden’s…irresponsible…advice: yeah, that was just some people that did something. And, it’s also 5,900 miles from Washington to Gaza. It’s easy enough for Biden—and Moulton, come to that—to sit safely on the faraway sidelines and carp, while terrorists, operating from inside Gaza, try to destroy the nation on whose borders Gaza sits.

Chimera

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Hamas has begun planning for the governance of the Gaza strip once its war against Israel is ended.

Hamas’s political leaders have been talking with their Palestinian rivals about how to govern Gaza and the West Bank after the war ends, a fraught negotiation that threatens to put them at odds with the militant wing fighting Israel.
The talks are the clearest sign that Hamas’s political faction is starting to plan for what follows the conflict.

Husam Badran, of Hamas’s Doha-based political bureau:

We want to establish a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem[.]

That’s not as outlandish or hubristic as it might seem, given the weakness of the Biden administration’s support for Israel as it defends itself against Hamas’ war of annihilation. That weakness is exemplified by Biden’s, Sullivan’s, Blinken’s, and Lloyd’s constant pressure on Israel for cease fire and to stop killing Gazans indiscriminately—a charge for which none of those worthies have offered a scintilla of evidence. That weakness is further exemplified by the letters from staffers and interns that Biden has received demanding overt support for “Palestinians.”

Nor are our allies in Europe—putative allies of Israel—helping the matter with their constant bleating for cease fires and ends to fighting and please stops.

There’s this…challenge…too, from Mohammed Dahlan, former Gaza security chief with close Emirati and Egyptian connections who’s in daily contact with Hamas:

[D]o you think anybody is going to be able to run to make peace without Hamas?

I ask does anybody think any sort of peace is possible with Hamas?

Israel must conclude Hamas’ war on Israeli terms and not on the terms of the weak kneed or of Palestinian terrorist supporters. The only legitimate end is for Israel to eliminate the entity that is determined to exterminate Israelis.

When the Hamas war is over, there should be no one in Hamas to plan, there should be no Hamas.

Red Sea and Political Timidity

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In the wake of repeated Houthi terrorists’ rocket, missile, and drone attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea and in the Gulf of Aden approaches to the Sea, BP has decided to abandon (BP is saying it’s a “pause”) this shorter and cheaper route and instead to go around Africa altogether to get to the Mediterranean Sea and to ports in Europe. Maersk has already made that decision; other shippers will follow, I predict.

BP’s statement, in part:

The safety and security of our people and those working on our behalf is BP’s priority. We will keep this precautionary pause under ongoing review, subject to circumstances as they evolve in the region.

The safety and security of commercial shipping in international shipping lanes also is the claimed purpose of the US Navy’s Freedom of Navigation operations, wherein our Navy often sails the sea lines of communication, often explicitly sailing contested routing through international waters. Simply sailing through, though, without doing anything other than being momentarily present, doesn’t accomplish much, as the terrorists’ actions in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden are so clearly demonstrating.

Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden is pretending to be trying to establish a coalition to protect trade through the Red Sea, but in the meantime, he’s not allowing the Navy to do anything more than shooting at those rockets, missiles, and drones that a couple of its ships can reach after those weapons already have been fired. Biden is not allowing our Navy to take overt and aggressive action to prevent those weapons from being launched in the first place. He’s not, for instance, allowing our Navy to destroy the Houthi’s launch sites throughout Houthi occupied Yemen, much less respond reactively to destroy those facilities involved in a particular attack.

Nor is he allowing our Navy to destroy Iran’s Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman ports, thereby seriously limiting Iran’s ability to supply the terrorists in Yemen.

Regarding his pretend coalition effort, Biden isn’t even working with Saudi Arabia in their effort to defeat the Houthi terrorists and restore the government of Yemen, which currently is resident in Saudi Arabia.

For those who object to the US acting as, spending treasure and equipment to be, the world’s policeman, what’s going on in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden is a clear and present demonstration of what happens with a President too timid to act, of what happens when we stop being the world’s policeman.

The US needs to act, whether other nations have the courage to do so or not. If we act, they will follow, or if they don’t, we still will have acted. And we don’t have to extend as much support as we do to those nations happy to freeload off our efforts or too timid to act themselves, even in concert with us. The spending on that support can be reallocated to our policeman role.