No. of Recommendations: 9
We're not? We're the ones sending their Navy and any ship that looks Minelaying-capable to the bottom of the sea. Plus our ships are being used as missile/drone defense radar and SAM sites.
But that's not what needs to happen. Which is why ships aren't traversing the strait without being cleared by Iran. What Trump is asking other countries to do, which we're not doing ourselves, is to secure the strait. That means either escort ships that will run interference against attacks from the shore (drones and missiles) or doing something on the actual shore to prevent Iran from making those attacks (boots on the ground).
It's obvious why we're not doing that - the public wouldn't support the casualties that would result from it. Which is why other countries, who never agreed to this in the first place, aren't willing to take that bullet for us.
Do you honestly think the Navy hasn't gamed out this out for the past several decades?
I'm sure they have. And I'm sure they have lots of plans for either naval escorts or ground troops seizing territory along the shoreline - or both - in order to respond to it. But we're not doing any of that, because we don't want to bear the costs that would inevitably come from it. Which is why we're not prepared to respond to this rather obvious countermeasure. And Trump is asserting that no one ever gamed out that Iran might attack energy networks in other Gulf States. I think that's untrue, of course - I have no doubt the military has gamed that out as well - but the fact that Trump is claiming that none of his team ever discussed it indicates that the current operation wasn't prepared for it.
And it's not intended to. What it *is* intended to do is prove the point that doing nothing is in itself a choice and that choice can have dire consequences down the road.
1poorguy has it 100% correct: What matters is where we go from here because the good ship Navel-gazing about Not Doing Something set sail a while ago.
Sure. And launching a war is a choice, and that choice can have dire consequences down the road as well. And sometimes launching a choice is the wrong choice compared to doing a deal (even a bad one), or even doing nothing at all.
And "where we go from here" is dramatically affected by how we got here. Because this military action was ill-considered and is unlikely to achieve any of our long-term strategic goals, that constrains our future options. Our allies are not willing to contribute because we didn't prepare the ground for them to do so. The public isn't willing to support escalation because we didn't prepare the ground for them to do so. And almost all of the reasons against "Doing Something" are also reasons against "Doing Something More," and they're certainly reasons against excoriating NATO countries for being understandably hesitant about pulling our chestnuts out of the fire we deliberately chose to put them into.
