Category Archives: defense policy

It Needs Disrupting

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It seems that the US Navy’s USS Gabrielle Giffords, a littoral combat ship, sailed too close to Second Thomas Shoal to suit the People’s Republic of China, and the PLA’s Southern Theater objected.

The US deliberately disrupted the situation in the South China Sea, seriously violated China’s sovereignty and security, seriously undermined regional peace and stability, and seriously violated international law and basic norms governing international relations, fully demonstrating that the US is the biggest threat to peace and stability in the South China Sea[.]

This is plainly untrue; no PRC sovereignty was violated since the shoal is owned by the Republic of the Philippines. Nevertheless, the PRC continued its provocations and tacit threats by having its naval force “mobilize” and track the Giffords.

In response to this latest PRC attempt at intimidation, the US Navy—and Australia, India, and Japan, the other members of the Quad—should send groups of combat ships (not just onesies and twosies) into the same area, conduct combat and surveillance aircraft flyovers, and engage in tracking PLAN shipping in the area.

The situation in the South China Sea badly wants disruption and the situation restored to its condition prior to the PRC’s invasion of the Sea and its occupation of all those islands owned by the other nations rimming the Sea.

Take Appropriate Action

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In response to Iran’s proxy Houthis’ attacks on US Navy combat ships and on commercial freight shipping in the Red Sea, Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden, through his National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, said that

The United States is going to take “appropriate action[.]”

Sure we will. Biden will have the Navy go drop a bomb, or two, on or toss a couple of missiles at a couple of unimportant Houthi buildings in the Yemeni desert, just like he did in the Syrian desert in pseudo-response to Iran’s Syria proxies’ dozens of attacks on US facilities there.

And the timing of this “appropriate action?” Sullivan, again saying the words Biden gave him to say:

We are going to take appropriate action in consultation with others, and we will do so at a time and place of our choosing.

Biden’s America is incapable of acting on its own, but only with the permission of others. Beyond that, his timing is nothing more than an empty “Whenever, man.”

Limits

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Progressive-Democrat Joe Biden, through his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, is busily trying to tie Israel’s hands (plural) behind its back as it fights its war of survival against the terrorist organizations of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorists ensconced in Gaza Strip. Blinken’s words:

“…the imperative to the United States that the massive loss of civilian life and displacement of the scale we saw in northern Gaza not be repeated in the south.” He said Israel must take “more effective steps to protect the lives of civilians.”

This is Biden and Blinken continuing to be cowed by the mullahs of Iran, who want Israel defeated to the point of destruction.

If these two had any morals at all, they’d take up that “massive loss of civilian life and displacement” with the Hamas, et al., terrorists (excuse the redundancy) who are butchering those civilians through their use of them as shields and of their residences, schools, and hospitals as weapons caches, rocket launch sites, and command centers.

If these two had any sense at all, they’d recognize that Israel already is taking the most “effective steps to protect the lives of civilians:” Israel is killing the terrorist Hamas, PIJ, et al., so they can never inflict those butcheries again.

Instead, these two…politicians…are bent on betraying Israel, and intended or not, they’re betraying the United States in consequence.

Pipe Dreams

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The Editors of The Wall Street Journal have laid out their view of how Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden Can Deter China with respect to the Republic of China. They pushed forward a series of actions that Biden could take vis-à-vis arming the RoC and rebuilding our own defense establishment. I’ll elide the extended time frame such actions would take to come to fruition, even were the Progressive-Democrats in Congress to allow those actions to move apace, without holding them hostage to their extremist projects.

No, the editors are acting from a false premise—that Biden actually could deter People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping.

On the contrary, Biden is incapable of deterring Xi, and Xi knows it. Biden already has allowed himself to be intimidated by Russian President-for-Life Vladimir Putin into not supplying Ukraine with the weapons it needs at the rate it needs them in order actually to defeat the barbarian. Biden is supplying the materiel only at a rate to keep Ukraine fighting and bleeding—and thereby letting the barbarian win through attrition.

Biden already has allowed the mullahs of Iran to intimidate him into not materially responding to Iranian/proxy repeated attacks on US forces in the Middle East beyond taking a couple of for-show potshots at a couple of unimportant buildings.

Biden already has allowed his own Executive Branch staffers to intimidate him into pressuring Israel to accede to a ceasefire, knowing full well that the sole beneficiary of such a thing would be the terrorists seeking to exterminate Israel.

When Xi invades the Republic of China, Biden will already have been intimidated into doing nothing more than taking a couple of for-show potshots at a couple of unimportant PRC buildings, and then meekly accepting the destruction of the RoC.

Best we can hope for is that Xi won’t move for a couple more years and that we get a President with more self-respect, more love of the US, more respect for our friends and allies. And more courage.

“The conflict erupted in the wake…”

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The Just the News subheadline continued:

…of an October 7 Hamas raid on Israeli territory that saw its forces seize roughly 200 hostages and kill about 1,200 civilians.

The subheadline is no accident, either. JtN repeated the distortion in the second paragraph:

The conflict erupted in the wake of an October 7 Hamas raid on Israeli territory that saw its forces seize roughly 200 hostages and kill about 1,200 civilians.

Distortion: the conflict erupted when that terrorist gang broke into Israel and butchered those 1,200 men, women—many of whom were raped first—and children—many of whom were babies whose heads were hacked off—with many from each of those categories tortured on the way to their deaths, and kidnapped those additional 200 victims. Butchered victims that JtN so saccharinely euphemizes as “civilians,” with no clarification regarding who those terrorism victims were. “Hostages” that JtN so cynically lists separately rather than including them in the count, as though they aren’t, as a group, “civilians,” though some few of them were soldiers.

This is disgusting, and JtN should know better. The article itself centered on Vermont Progressive-Democratic Party Congresswoman Becca Balint’s coming out in favor of an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire. Her foolishness, though, is beside the point of this post.