Training Your Children For Chaos

I'm a parent. As a parent, I know that the way to ensure a lot of chaos in your home is to warn your children of impending punishments which then never materialize.

All decent parents know this.

But, the United States government does not know it.

We have, for over five years now, been warning Iran about their nuclear program, telling their leaders that "all options are on the table." For five years we have been warning, and doing nothing.

Now, Iran believes they can get away with anything.

From Gabe Schoenfeld at Commentary:


What Do We Do Now?05.09.2008 - 10:17 AM
Back in February, the Pentagon announced that it had moved the guided-missile destroyer, USS Cole, and a number of other ships to the eastern Mediterranean, off the coast of Lebanon.
It sends a “signal that we’re engaged and we are going to be in the vicinity, and that’s a very important part of the world.” Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

At the same time, an anonymous Bush administration official told CNN the deployment demonstrates that “the U.S. is concerned about the situation in Lebanon, and we want to see the situation resolved.”

Now that things are falling apart in Lebanon, what are these ships going to do?

Even without the American statements and naval deployment, a successful effort by the Iranian-backed Hizballah to seize control of large swaths of Beirut and impose its will on the Lebanese government would be a setback of the first rank: for Lebanon, for Israel, and for the broader Middle East. The disaster for us is compounded by the fact that we have put our prestige on the line.

Having failed to respond to Iranian aggression in Iraq in so many instances (even as we loudly denounce it), and having failed to check Iran’s nuclear-weapons program (even as we loudly denounce it, too), the ayatollahs are clearly feeling emboldened. They are now making their move in Lebanon. What are our ships going to do? Maintain a symbolic presence while Lebanon burns? The bill for our fecklessness is coming due.