As sure as night follows day, a Biden administration lackey will be sent out to proclaim a “fear of escalation” following any conflagration around the globe.
One that is reaping chaos and destruction across the world.
The latest is the president’s utter pusillanimity when it comes to Yemen’s Houthi terrorists — a Nazi-loving, America-hating proxy army of Iran — as they bar the Red Sea to commercial traffic.
Yes, after months of increasingly brazen Houthi attacks via rocket, drone and boat-to-boat warfare on commercial ships and US military forces, Biden finally authorized Thursday a display of actual kinetic force against Iran’s eager foot soldiers.
Yet despite media hyperventilating, it amounted to no more than a pinprick: five dead and six injured — and no Houthi leaders even targeted.
In other words, it was more of the same from Biden as Iran and its catspaws move against us in the Middle East.
Why on earth are we letting the Houthis humiliate us?
Because Biden fears escalation from Iran: “We don’t seek a conflict wider in the region, and we’re not looking for a conflict with the Houthis,” says White House flack John Kirby.
It’s why Biden took the Houthis off the US list of officially recognized terror groups soon after taking office.
It’s why the White House led up even to this meaningless squib with weeks of warnings about vague consequences, giving the Houthis ample time to move key assets and personnel out of harm’s way.
But it’s our current failure to exercise real deterrence that brings escalatory risk.
Iran knows by now that Biden won’t check its ambitions, and acts accordingly.
Peace Through Strength requires — unsurprisingly — actual strength.
A policy of broadcasting a desire not to escalate invites the West’s enemies to do exactly that, taking the safe bet that the US is itching to back down.
This thinking underlies every Biden overseas disaster from Afghanistan to Ukraine to China to Gaza.
OK: His complete and hasty Afghan bugout wasn’t predicated on fear, per se, but on a willful insistence that the retreat would have no real consequences beyond letting the Taliban eventually return to power.
In fact, it brought an instant collapse of the Afghan government and a humiliating and deadly US exit; worse, that signal of utter weakness (which Biden insists was a great success) encouraged the forces of chaos to go on the march, most obviously Vladimir Putin’s bloody and barbaric war to conquer Ukraine.
And now the prez buys Russia’s bluffs about going nuclear, and so refuses to commit to helping Ukraine actually win.
As a result, the meat grinder grinds on, civilians die and Putin gloats and waits.
Biden allows China to send its spy balloons over our nation with total impunity and does Beijing’s bidding on the declassification of intel around COVID’s origins.
And so Beijing continues to surveil the globe and menace our ally Taiwan.
Our president publicly and wrongly chastises Israel in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities because he fears some nebulous repercussions across the Arab world and a more direct confrontation with Iran.
Leaving the only real deterrence work to the Jewish state, now holding back the tide of brutal Islamist terror via a justified and humane counterattack against Hamas.
In all this Biden echoes his old boss Barack Obama, who let chaos run rampant around the world via his disastrous Iran nuclear deal, Syrian sellout and Putin toadying.
But it’s past time for America to act like what she is: the world’s premier military power.
Until we do, our emboldened enemies will keep on escalating.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
