The Wall Street Journal-20080115-Damn the Torpedoes- Not- Restraint May Bite Us
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Damn the Torpedoes, Not! Restraint May Bite Us
Walter Mead echoes a familiar media theme that admirable restraint on the part of a U.S. Navy ship captain in the Straits of Hormuz avoided a disastrous confrontation with Iran that might have ignited a more serious military incident ("Iran's Provocation," op-ed, Jan. 10). I believe that view is misguided and that the Navy's failure to respond may tempt the Iranians to see how much further they can go.
Mr. Mead portrays the Iranians as undisciplined members of the Revolutionary Guard who may have been acting without the knowledge or approval of the Iranian government. Other than the identification of the Revolutionary Guard, all these assumptions are both dubious and dangerous. It is just as likely that this incident was designed to see how U.S. forces would react to provocation and that the information gained will be used to plan an actual attack later on.
Our government is gun-shy, unwilling to use power even in appropriate circumstances for fear of angering an adversary and drawing diplomatic scorn from nail-biters in the U.N., the EU, etc. No doubt the captain acted as his superiors in Washington wanted. But this reticence emboldens our adversaries and invites further aggression that diminishes American power throughout the world. Better to send a strong deterrent message by blowing these two boats out of the water.
Fritz Mehrtens
Lt. Col., U.S. Army, Ret.
Irvine, Calif.
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Walter Russell Mead made a glaring error when he wrote that the U.S. has always fought to protect freedom of the seas. When Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser blockaded the strait leading from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Red Sea in 1967, Israel asked Western powers, specifically the U.S., to intervene to protect freedom of passage. Nothing was done by President Lyndon Johnson or other Western leaders. The Six Day War ensued. It appears that "freedom of the seas" is a selective right, at least as far as Israel is concerned.
Harold B. Reisman
Carlsbad, Calif.
