desperately working the bellows
AP:Also Sunday, the U.S. focused new attention on the Jan. 6 confrontation between American and Iranian naval vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.Some effing speedboats -- let's take grandma waterskiing -- have become a naval "fleet" that staged a "confrontation" between two mighty navies. It is now uncomplicatedly a fact that the boats "charged at" and "threatened to blow up" three U.S. Navy warships, a totally easy task when it's speedboats vs. destroyers, underway, in open water, without the element of surprise. And then, as Navy personnel squeezed back on the trigger -- deus ex machina! Mon dieu, mon cap-ee-tahn, they 'av vaneeshed! (Briiigadooon, Briiigadooon...)
U.S. Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, commander of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, which patrols the Gulf, briefed Bush on the incident before the president left Bahrain on Sunday morning.
Cosgriff told Bush that he took it "deadly seriously" when an Iranian fleet of high-speed boats charged at and threatened to blow up a three-ship U.S. Navy convoy passing near Iranian waters. The Iranian naval forces vanished as the American ship commanders were preparing to open fire.
Speedboats. They were a handful of fucking speedboats. That drove by some armed-to-the-teeth destroyers, checked shit out, and drove away, while somebody dicked around on the radio. ("We are coming to blow you up -- because you have Prince Albert in a can! Is your refrigerator running, American pig-dogs?") ("Come back and we will taunt you a second time.") It's like Hitler! Will Western Civilization have the courage to stop them before they invade Poland!?!?
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posted by Chris Bray @ 6:14 PM
4 Comments:
It occurs to me -- and I really should be thinking about other things right now -- that this little bit of overblown rhetoric might be directed more at an Iranian audience than an American one (or perhaps at both): if they laugh it off, it could be seen as a "bring it on" kind of gesture, which could inspire even more reckless action on the part of the Iranians.
I still need to be convinced that they were engaged in reckless action before I see U.S. rhetoric as being aimed at preventing "even more reckless action." The Strait of Hormuz is twenty-one miles wide at its narrowest point, so ships are going to drive by it at, what, ten or twelve miles off the Iranian coast? Why is it reckless or outrageous for Iranian boats to patrol ten or twelve miles off the Iranian coast, approaching and observing passing traffic?
Would to good to hear from someone with Navy experience who knows the protocols for warships passing a foreign coastline, but I would think this is some semi-ordinary stuff.
Again, if Iranian frigates turned up ten miles off the U.S. coast, would be behave so provocatively and recklessly as to send someone out to look at them and see what they were doing? Of course we would.
My take is still, "Iranian boats off the coast of Iran."
I would seriously love to see a journalist actually call the U.S. Coast Guard and ask them what they would do if Iranian warships drove up to within ten miles of the port at Charleston.
You're right, but a more appropriate comparison might be to something more routine -- the US presence in the Gulf isn't surprising the way Iranian incursions into US waters would be.
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