One of the things that gave us Trump was the fecklessness of multiple administrations on the Mullahs, who have been waging war on us for four decades. The Bush administration did nothing as they were killing our troops in Iraq, In the case of Obama (and John Kerry), it went beyond fecklessness, arguably, to treason (though there is no formal declaration of war).
Roger Simon says that the attack on the Saudi oil fields was this era’s Pearl Harbor, and it’s time to drop the hammer on them.
[Update a few minutes later]
Roger Simon says that the attack on the Saudi oil fields was this era’s Pearl Harbor,
I thought 9/11 was this era’s Pearl Harbor, that attack in which 15 Saudi’s, and 4 other Arab Muslim hijackers, organized by a Saudi billionaire, killed nearly 3000 people in NY.
Or is this Houthi attack deemed to have eclipsed 9/11?
The Japanese didn’t launch a third wave to take out US oil facilities, so by that one narrow measure the Houthi attack was even worse that Pearl Harbor!
Always-warring Muslim factions hurling relatively inexpensive cruise missiles at each other’s oil facilities may do more than anything to return the Arab region back to Ethiopian levels of economic might and political significance. Why blow up the local fruit stand when you can blow up a refinery?
On the downside, detecting and intercepting low-rent cruise missile attacks against Western targets might turn out to be extremely expensive.
911 was almost two decades ago. It was a different era.
That’s just an excuse to sensationalize events of little importance by comparing them with events that were very significant, underhanded and very tragic. Saudi Arabia is at war with the Houthi, the Houthi launched an attack of SA, so what? The US was not at war with Japan before the Pearl Harbor attack, the US was not at war with Al Qaeda before 911, on both of those occasions the attacks were unprovoked – from out of the blue. For this attack to be equivalent to Pearl Harbor the US would have had to have been pounding the Japanese home islands from 1937 though to December ’41.
The US wasn’t formally at war, but we had been putting extreme economic pressure on the Japanese, in terms of cutting off access to (among other things) petroleum and rubber in southeast Asia. Iran has been at war with us for four decades, but we’ve been pretending otherwise, until now.
The Houthi are Iranian proxies. Ignoring that relationship ignores why there is a war in the first place.
My coming of age attack was the Marine barracks bombing in Beruit. Eighteen years later it was 9/11. It’s amazing how fast two decades pass. Now it’s been four decades. Time doesn’t seem to change the sandbox.
The Japanese didn’t launch a third wave to take out US oil facilities, so by that one narrow measure the Houthi attack was even worse that Pearl Harbor!
So this is the third wave Houthi attack, what were the 1st & 2nd wave Houthi attacks that were equivalent to Pearl Harbor? I must have missed the news that week.
The only reason this isn’t a much bigger deal than it is, is because of fracking.
Don’t be silly, the Chicago genius said it’s impossible to drill our way out of this!
Bingo! Well that and progressives the world over are malthusians. To paraphrase Jim, the Earth can absorb a few losses.
For those that care about people and not Gaia; this is a significant event. But not really to the United States. It seems all Trump has done is open up the US petroleum reserve to make up for the production losses from Saudi Arabia. This act makes money for the United States, can be done cheaply because replacement costs are cheap, and provides more options to Saudi Arabia on response. With great leadership, these things are insignificant.
“For those that care about people and not Gaia; this is a significant event. But not really to the United States. ”
Leland,
Not so sure I agree it isn’t a significant event for the US.
The Iranians have, over time, stepped up their provocations. First a tanker, then another tanker with the crew captured, shoot down of a US drone, now a drone attack on SA plus another tanker attack.
Unless they are face-punched in some way the Iranian schoolyard bully will draw the appropriate conclusion:
I can continue to up the ante.
We know Iran is working on ICBM’s and Nuke warheads.
If they get them then the US is directly affected.
If they get them and the ante is allowed to continue upward, then the US (and other nations) would be in serious trouble. At the very least our ability to pressure the Iranians would be curbed.
So it’s in the US’s interest to stop punch Iran now, I would say.
It’s time for both Saudi Arabia and Israel to start taking care of themselves in the Middle East and not depend on the US to do the dirty, heavy-lift work when it comes to going after their enemies. We’ve lost too many lives and too much money in the region for very little, if any, gain. For the US to wage ware on Iran is a fool’s game that, I can only hope, Trump will continue avoid.
While I agree with you that the nations in the ME ought to start taking care of business, I will point out that Iran has a much bigger army than the others:
Iran: 873,000 in military
350,000 reserve
1.4 million reach military age annually
Total population: 83 million
Saudi Arabia: 230,000 in military
0 reserve
583,000 reach military age annually
Total pop: 33 million
Now admittedly these raw numbers are not the whole story in terms of equipment and actual fighting power. But they are important.
Also even if you got the Saudi’s to do something serious like take out Iranian refineries you just know that the US will get blamed for it…(Saudis are US lackeys etc)
Something needs to be done. The attack has to be answered. But I’m not sure what the answer is. At a minimum tighter economic screws. But even there we get undercut by the Frenchies and Rooshians.
I think Roger Simon missed the new year of 2019. We, for the time being, don’t have to care what happens to the middle east. Maybe now would be a good time to remind the Saudi monarchy that they have 25,000 madrassas in Pakistan, and 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens, and the rest were Yemeni.
Well this didn’t last long. I’m glad to hear there were no casualties. Oil price gained 15% immediately after the attack, but has already lost half that gain and is poised to drop more today. This means poor people around the world can better afford the luxuries that Kiwis take for granted.
‘Twould be a shame if Kharg Island were to suddenly explode, crippling Iran’s ability to export, or even smuggle, oil out of the country by sea.