Category Archives: foreign policy

Step in the Right Direction

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If Germany will follow through promptly.

The German government has approved the export of air-defense missiles to Saudi Arabia, underlining a softening of its hard line of recent years toward arms exports to the kingdom.

They’ve approved a whole 150 air-to-air missiles for Iris-T air defense systems.

And:

Germany is open to delivering more Eurofighter jets…to Saudi Arabia.

That’d be cool, too, if they’ll actually follow through promptly, and if the other nations of the Eurofighter consortium also agree and follow through promptly.

But it’s only a step. How about some Eurofighters and associated weapons and maintenance suites for Ukraine, which is involved an a truly existential struggle against barbarians? Or does Germany still think those Slavs are too dumb to be able to fly such an airplane, even after the UA demonstrated Germany’s…error…with Leopard tanks?

Bring It

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Texas’ Republican Governor Greg Abbott has signed into law a bill which authorizes Texas’ law enforcement personnel to arrest illegal aliens and further authorizes Texas State judges to order them deported.

The Biden administration objects.

In a letter to Abbott…the Department of Justice says it will “pursue all appropriate legal remedies to ensure that Texas does not interfere with the functions of the federal government.”
The letter says that the law “intrudes into a field that is occupied by the federal government and is preempted,” citing a 2012 Supreme Court ruling, US v Arizona, which found that the federal government has the power to enforce immigration law….

Abbott has committed to fighting the Biden/Garland DoJ as far and for as long as is necessary, given the Progressive-Democrat President’s decision to erase our southern border and in pursuant of which he has abrogated his Constitutional obligations, one, to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed with his deliberate decision to ignore our immigration laws and, two, to safeguard our nation by defending our borders.

I say bring the lawsuit. Discovery, all by itself, will be illuminating. Let’s see what you got.

Watching and Learning

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The Houthis, the gang of terrorists ruling over parts of Yemen, fired anti-ship missiles at USN combat ships in the Red Sea.

The Navy engaged three ballistic missiles provided to Yemen’s Houthis by Iran. It was the first time the Navy shot down an incoming anti-ship ballistic missile in combat, officials say.
Naval assets, including the USS Laboon and F/A-18 Super Hornets from the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, shot down 12 one-way attack drones, three anti-ship ballistic missiles, and two land attack missiles fired by the Houthis over a 12-hour period, US Central Command said.

What troubles me about this, aside from Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s cowardice in not responding to these attacks in any serious manner, is this. There are three combat ships of the People’s Republic of China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy in the immediate area.

Those three PLAN ships aren’t there to stop pirates or to protect commercial shipping from terrorist activity. They’re there to watch the US Navy engage anti-ship missiles and rockets. And to learn. This as the PRC prepares its invasion of the Republic of China and its…neutralization…of the USN in support of that invasion.

The PLAN—and the Russian navy, et al.—are going to watch what we do and where we do it; that’s unavoidable. Done right, though, the watching could be a deterrent as they see how capable we are and how we’re willing to use that capability. But done right, particularly in the present case, necessarily includes using our capability as a coup de main to eliminate Houthi ports and launch sites and the Iranian ports in a matter of some hours or a day or two, to eliminate the threat altogether.

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.