Praise for the US Navy

While I’ve been looking and thinking mostly about the primary, I want to take a moment to praise our men and women in harm’s way, because they deserve it. Mostly, I want to look at the incident with the Iranian “navy”. Basically, what we have here is an incident in which terrorists on boats — probably the best way to describe the Iranian naval force — dropped objects in front of three US warships, and broadcast the threat the American ships were about to explode. Given that Iran specializes in mine warfare, and the USS Cole attack can’t be far from anyone’s mind in this kind of a situation, the US Navy had every reason to believe that this was a real attack. To be sure, if our sailors had responded with force, a bunch of people would now be condemning the US for using its powerful warships to pick on the poor, helpless Iranian “ships,” conveniently ignoring the fact that in the modern era, the relative size of ships doesn’t count for as much as it used to. A mine dropped from a small craft can still be destructive even to the larger American warships.

The US Navy demonstrated  amazing restraint and professionalism, and therefore didn’t fall into the provocative trap that the Iranians tried to spring. Of course, if incidents like this continue, it’s important to note that it becomes more and more likely that an attack will actually materialize. It will be interesting to see if Iran really wants to press this issue. I hope, for everyone’s sake, that they do not.

President Bush, meanwhile, is right to call this what it was — a provocative act. He’s right to call on the Iranians not to continue in this pattern.