NIMBY

And it may be that he rather liked this adventurous turn
in his affairs, which promised an opening into novel scenes
and martial excitements
--Billy Budd, Herman Melville

Men are disturbed not by things,
but by the view which they take of them
--Epictetus
__________

Can anyone out there say "Gulf of Tonkin" incident? (Surely not White House Press secretary Dana Perino, who recently admitted to not knowing what the Cuban Missile Crisis was. It was before her time, don't you know.)

"In what U.S. officials called a serious provocation, Iranian boats harassed and provoked three U.S. Navy ships [1/6/08] in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, threatening to explode the American vessels."

"U.S. forces were on the verge of firing on the Iranian boats in the early Sunday incident, when the boats turned and moved away, a Pentagon official said. "It is the most serious provocation of this sort that we've seen yet," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record" (Pentagon Says Ships Harassed by Iran.)

White House spokesman Tony Fratto -- presumably a little older than Ms. Perino, -- said, "We urge the Iranians to refrain from such provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future." Iran's Foreign Ministry said Monday that the weekend incident was "something normal" and had been resolved.

Assuredly it is poor OPSEC to allow any non-aligned vessel to get within blast distance of a U.S. warship or even an oil carrier. The possibility for catastrophe is too great.

But how does the Iranian small potatoes harassment differ from the following "two major exercises" by two U.S. carrier groups off the Iranian coast:

"At about this time last year, Bush announced he was sending a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf region in a show of force against Iran. The U.S. Navy quietly scaled back to one carrier group several months later. But while the two were there, they staged two major exercises off Iran's coast.

"The war games amounted to U.S. muscle-flexing at a time when Tehran increasingly was at loggerheads with the international community over its disputed nuclear program and threatened to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz for oil transports in case of a U.S. military strike on Iran."

The only difference Ranger can see is in the magnitude of the provocation. The U.S. uses carrier groups to provoke the Iranians.

The U.S. should show Superpower restraint and back off. The Iranians have every right to protect their territorial waters and they have as much legitimacy as the U.S. in using international waters.

U.S. foreign policy and military actions should aim at reducing tensions rather than amping up chances of violence.

After all, the Iranians are not performing these "provocations" in the Gulf of Mexico.