The lives of American sailors were valued less than appeasing Iran.
The Biden-Harris administration has spent the past months pressuring Israel into surrendering to Hamas Islamic terrorists and to avoid offending Hezbollah to avoid “escalation.”
Now to be fair, this is also the same policy they’ve adopted for America.
After a Houthi attack on an oil tanker led to a leak into the water (mostly ignored or minimized by the same media which went nuts over the Exxon-Valdez spill), we have to ask again why the United States has spent 8 months trying to stop attacks by an Islamic terrorist group of Yemen on naval vessels. Why is it so hard?
The answer, as I wrote before, is that the Biden-Harris administration has banned the Navy from taking pro-active actions against the Iranian-backed terrorist group. US Navy vessels have spent eight months shooting down missiles and drones aimed at them, sometimes at the last second, but can’t carry the war to the enemy.
Now there’s once again confirmation that this is going on and an explanation of the unsurprising motive.
The U.S. Navy’s Carrier Strike Group Two was instructed to limit large-scale counterstrikes against Houthi rebels in order to avoid upsetting the delicate balance of deterrence with Iran, the CSG’s former commander suggested in an interview released Monday.
USS Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the thick of the counter-Houthi operation from the start, and at its peak, the carrier was launching fighters to up to nine events a day. Its pilots put in more than 30,000 flight hours and launched more than 60 air-to-air missiles. The destroyer escorts used up so many missiles that they had to set up a pierside resupply operation in nearby Yanbu, Saudi Arabia. It was all within the crew’s training, Miguez told former Navy commander and Youtuber Ward Carroll – except for the unexpected volume of Houthi unmanned aerial vehicles.
“Just the immense number of UAV interactions that we had, that was something that we did not holistically train to . . . not on the level that we had to encounter in combat,” he said.
Just protecting USS Eisenhower from attack was a significant endeavor. The carrier had at least two fighters up and nearby at all times to carry out air defense. If it couldn’t have its own fighters in the air, it drew on the resources of the U.S. Air Force, which would dispatch land-based planes to fly an equivalent force-protection mission around the carrier.
Initially, Eisenhower had freedom of movement within the operating area, but as time went on and Houthi attacks became more sophisticated, Miguez had to reposition in order to make the carrier a harder target. “For force protection, I had to move the carrier multiple times,” he said.
Eisenhower’s crew got to hit back at the Houthi threat with seven large coordinated strikes, working with the Air Force and with allied partners. “We were definitely degrading their capability,” Miguez said. But the task force was not permitted to bring is full might to bear against all targets.
“There are definite strategies that were put forward, but our National Command Authority decided that those – I would call more aggressive postures and more aggressive strikes – was not something we wanted to challenge,” Miguez said. “We all know Iranian-backed groups like the Houthis, where that threat’s emanating from . . . And so that is the calculus that’s handled at echelon zero, at the National Command Authority, with NSA, and everybody else. Those are things that I don’t dabble in.”
In short, political decisions were made that forced the USS Eisenhower to play sitting duck because they weren’t allowed to hit the terrorists hard to avoid offending Iran.
The Biden-Harris administration valued the lives of American sailors less than appeasing Iran.
somehistory says
Swat at the flies with the hand, but don’t get out the large flyswatter or spray and kill them on the spot.
This is criminal behavior.
Namer says
Absolutely right. We could have ended this Houthi garbage a long time ago. Trump would have stopped it.
OLD GUY says
Who gives a crap if you offend Iran. Iran would kill us if it could with no second thought. Make no mistake Iran and Islam don’t care if they offend us. Of course our political leaders meet with their smooth talking money contributing leaders, the wolves in sheep’s clothes and overlook the violence of islam.
SC says
It is not merely criminal it is positively encouraging international terrorism. A10’s strafing the pirates is the least we should be doing.
If they happen to mistakenly strafe a few Iranian gunboats menacing the traffic then so be it. Bullies and thugs need to be deterred. being dead is a really good deterrent.
Taffy says
If Biden gave an order with no conditions to the Navy to take out the Houthis, the Houthis would be no more in about 2-3 days with the added benefit of taking them out of the Yemeni power structure. Then if Biden asked the Ayatollah if he wanted to be next, and told the Navy to take out the Republican Guard and the Quds Force and some Iranian infrastructure for good measure, Iran would be VERY quiet for the foreseeable future.
Speaking of Yemen, no one seems to care about the Yemeni famine that has been going on since about 2016 and the 50,000 children that starved to death in 2017 as a result. Nor has anyone seemed to care about the resulting cholera outbreak that has affected more than 1,000,000 Yemenis As of the end of 2021, the war in Yemen has caused 337,000 deaths, 240,000 of which are children.
Yet, the MSM and the UN and the World seem to be routing for Hamas murderers and against Israel who is merely trying to end the terror regime so that they can live in peace. The justified killing of Hamas militants and the low collateral damage to its civilian population (the majority of which are Hamas) pales in comparison to the true humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
Biden has the power to clean up the Houthi and Iran mess with a minimal expenditure of US resources. “On War” by Carl von Clausewitz is a roadmap of what to do in such situations, and is required reading at the US Military Academy at West Point, the Naval Academy at Annapolis and, I do believe, at the Air Force Academy. But, it is obvious that Biden, Blinken or any other part of the Administration has not heard of “On War” or of its recommendations concerning enforcing diplomacy with a strong military.
Let’s Go Brandon!!! Trump 2024.
somehistory says
The neglect….in not “noticing” the famine…a real one…and the dead children in the tens of thousands, is because they don’t care. Not one bit of caring for any real victims of the evil that is islam and the intent to take over the whole Earth for satan the devil.
They care only about themselves, their money and their power. And that is because in their own way, they are just as evil as the rabid mozlums who are murdering for their false god and fake prophet. They are all fighting against “good” in order to establish more “evil.”
Phredd says
What is it that has us trying to appease Iran? They offer nothing of real value (ok…some oil, but we’ve lived without Iranian oil for quite some time), just terror.
And Israel proved in April that Iran is impotent.
Yemen should be an easy fix: two airports, a few roads from other countries, and a couple of ports. This is an afternoon’s work for a couple of trainers.