Time to Make a Statement?

In the international incident that has caused oil prices to spike on several occasions already, Tehran has stated they will release the female British sailor on either Wednesday or Thursday.

Iran has formulated the latest in a string of international crisis. The United Kingdom has released the Global Positioning Satellite coordinates of the fifteen sailors and marines at the time of their capture. Iran has clamed that the crew was two miles East of the given coordinates, the second position they have given with no explanation for the variance.

The UK insists that all relations with Iran are on hold until all fifteen crewmembers are released.

Prime Minister Tony Blair told the House of Commons that "there was no justification whatever ... for their detention, it was completely unacceptable, wrong and illegal."

"We had hoped to see their immediate release; this has not happened. It is now time to ratchet up the diplomatic and international pressure in order to make sure the Iranian government understands its total isolation on this issue," Blair said.”

Time to ratchet up the pressure. Time to make a statement.

I do not think so. I think it is far beyond time to stop making statements and start taking action. Every time we “make a statement” it seems the result is that they just do not care. They are willing to undertake the loss of lives of their citizens, they are willing to suffer so long as we fail in the long run. They do not care if we bomb a factory or destroy a ship or too and they even pray that we accidentally kill an group of innocents as they can use it as fodder in the ongoing media war in which we are loosing.

We need to take a stand. Can we? I doubt it. Will we? Unlikely.

The America public is no longer willing or able to sacrifice long enough and surely does not have the stomach to fight a real war, a total war. A war in which the goal is total victory because any effort less that that will only result in defeat.