The news broke a few days ago of some Iranian speed boats threatening a few of our American ships.  Of course the Iranians lied about it and so forth.  What else is new?  But this situation reminded me eerily of the USS Cole.

Back when America was much more cowardly under "the best president" we’ve ever had, Bill Clinton, the terrorists learnt a few previous times that there would be little to no retaliation for killing Americans.  There was the bombing of the World Trade Center in February 1993; six people were killed, over 1000 wounded.  19 U.S. military personnel were killed and 240 Americans were wounded when a bomb aboard a fuel truck exploded outside a U.S. air force installation in Saudi Arabia in June of 1996.  August 7^th, 1998 saw U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania get bombed, about a dozen Americans killed many injured (though it didn’t compare to the 5,000 Africans wounded).  Finally, the USS Cole was bombed on October 12^th, 2000, killing 17 and wounding 39 American sailors.  But apparently the collective loss of life and even far greater number of injured Americans wasn’t enough for Clinton to take any significant action.  Then again, he was preoccupied with other affairs.  It is obvious that the terrorists knew that they could get away with whatever they did because there would be no retaliation.  So of course they continued, that is, until September 11^th when President Bush finally stood up to them.  Aside from the cowardly attacks on our troops in Iraq, there have not been any non war zone terrorist attacks since.

Another point that bears remembrance is that 15 British sailors got kidnapped by the Iranians in March of 2007 and apparently eight other British military personnel were kidnapped by the Iranians in June 2004.  Both times they accused the British sailors of illegally entering Iranian water.  Anyone who believes Ahmadinejad’s claims of “invasion” of Iranian waters is either completely uninformed, ignorant, or mentally unstable.  I can think of few less trustworthy people and few bigger liars.  Regardless, this act of war, too, was not dealt with in any way to show Iran who is in charge.  And that is the British’s fault.  I believe that if that happened to Americans, we would have shown them that they made a grave mistake.

It is the accumulation of these events, for the most part gone unchecked, that brought an uneasy feeling when hearing about what happened in the Straight of Hormuz.  On January 6^th, apparently Iranian speed boats approached three of our warships, threatening them by saying “I am coming at you.  You will explode in a couple of minutes.”  The people on the Iranian boats also supposedly dropped boxes in the water.  Reportedly the Iranian boats retreated just before we were going to open fire.  And, of course, Ahmadinejad said that the video that was of the incident was faked.  I was not on either ship, so obviously I cannot say exactly what happened.  However, thinking back to the USS Cole and what happened to the British sailors, it wouldn’t surprise me if either happened to these ships.  Granted they could’ve been blown apart instantly, but that would not have stopped the Iranians from trying. 

I have read that some sailors on the USS Cole wanted to fire at the approaching ship because they knew what it was going to do; however, the rules of engagement prohibited it.  These idiotic rules of engagement cost us 17 lives.  Nice going Clinton.   Who is to say that the boxes the Iranians were dropping in the water were not bombs?  They easily could have been and, thus, it could have been the USS Cole, Version 2.  The Iranians directly threatened the well being of the ships, saying that, not only are they pursuing, but also that the ships were going to blow up in a couple of minutes.  Luckily they did not.  But if I was on one of the ships and I saw that unfolding, I would have immediately thought of the USS Cole and how Americans were killed by some Islamofascist.  I likely would have had a hard time not blowing them to pieces, or at the very least fire some warning shots. 

For a moment, going back to the fact that these Iranians said “I am coming at you.  You will explode in a few minutes,” is like calling the cops and saying that you are going to blow up a nearby school.  Of course the police would immediately respond to the threat and, if you did not comply, would likely use deadly force because of the aforementioned situation.  Upon arrival of the police, if you also started pulling out bomb detonators or something to show the intent on blowing up the building, that too would be of more reason for them to take action.  Using this analogy, it seems that, in any domestic threat involving a similar situation, chances are very good that the potential “bomber” would be killed.  So why not these Iranians?  It certainly would not have been any “rush to judgment” or “rush to war” since we were obviously provoked and directly threatened with loss of both life and ships.

Thankfully this situation in the Straight of Hormuz was not deadly for Americans.  It’s happened before under a different, less effective administration.  But this administration made sure that, after the grand scale in which over 3000 people were savagely murdered, that it would not happen again in any like fashion.  And it didn’t happen like it previously did either.  Perhaps if those Iranian boats were blown up and those on board got to go meet their virgins, it would have sent a message to Iran to stop harassing America because we will not take it.  It is important that we keep with that message and not go back to the unresponsiveness of the Clinton era.  If the Iranian leaders are too ignorant to realize that we will retaliate when American lives get lost, perhaps they need to wake up and smell the fuse burning. 

Because of what our military is today, another USS Cole did not happen, nor did our military personnel get kidnapped.  But I will mark this threat up at USS Cole, Version 1.5.  The same thing almost happened, and I trust that the commanders on those ships accurately accessed the situation, it appears so anyway.  If history repeated itself in such a violent way as before, Iran would suffer the rightful consequences. 

It’s nothing a few thousand bombs, dropped on our plotted out strategic targets, can’t take care of.