Fox News alert Deadly American drone strike Thursday in Baghdad
killed an Iranian backed militia leader,
the first known targeting killing of its kind by U.S.
forces under this president. The move comes amid at least
120 attacks on American forces in the region since early
October.
Here to react Fox News senior strategic analyst,
retired four-star General Jack Keane.
General, my senses when you heard about this,
you thought about time, am I right?
Yeah, no doubt about it.
I mean the, the administration finally gave the military permission
to take down the first Iranian backed leader in this
administration as something we should have done long time ago.
They've been attacking us for three years.
And certainly as we have seen and you've reported daily
here,
that attacks increased and dramatically,
you know, since the October 7th attack by Hamas inside
of Israel.
This is an attempt to restore deterrence.
We've been talking about this for some time,
despite the pressure it will put on the Iraqi government
who have inside their parliament significant opposition to the US
troop presence
in Iraq. All that said,
this is absolutely a step in the right direction.
The administration deserves some credit on it.
And yeah, it's about time.
I agree totally. What you said days,
a couple of days before.
It looks like the Israelis to get a key Hamas
leader in Lebanon.
It delayed the Secretary of State
Lincoln's arrival there, but now he's going to head over
there to defuse tensions.
And we gave the Houthi rebels one last chance to
knock it off,
to defuse tensions. And they answered with an unmanned surface
vessel attack.
One of these water drones,
I guess you would say for civilians like me,
your thought about what they just did and how it
changes
possibly commercial vessels in the region.
Well, certainly the Houthis have expanded to war by disrupting
the commercial trafficking
through the Red Sea, which is really the exit and
the entrance point for the Suez Canal.
And as we've documented, about half of the shipping now
that
goes through the Suez Canal is going around the Horn
of Africa,
which is going to impact the global supply chain and
have an impact on on the world economy
at Houthis, check mark, they've accomplished what they set out
to do,
which is disrupt the world shipping through the Suez Canal.
We have not stopped it.
I don't believe we will stop it just by defending
ourselves.
I think we have to go to the source,
take down the Rockets, the missiles,
the infrastructure, the radar, the command and control.
Brian, we've got the capability to do that in a
night or maybe two or three at the most
if we took a more measured approach to this.
And as I've said many times before,
we keep ignoring the source,
which is Iran. General McKenzie,
the former CENTCOM commander, has an excellent article in the
Wall Street Journal laying out why we need deterrence and
why killing Qassem Soleimani was so important in putting the
Iranians back on their heels.
And we have to do more of that.
We have to go to the source to recognize that
they're directing,
they're supporting this. They are conducting a war in the
Middle East to drive the United States out and destroy
Israel,
and they're using the proxies to do it,
and we can't continue to ignore them.
General, describe what you mean when you say the best
way to stop the expansion of a war
is show you're willing to attack back.
How is that mindset going to stop the expansion of
this conflict,
if anything, Ken,
yeah, you have to achieve,
you know, some some kind of escalation dominance here.
That what holds back the administration is the fear that
if we take action then that will escalate and we'll
get out of control to walk up the ladder of
escalation that will lead to war.
The history doesn't support that.
Dealing with the Iranians, the reason why they used the
the proxies because they don't want direct confrontation themselves with
the United States.
It's been a pretty successful strategy,
frankly, going back to the Reagan administration.
But Reagan and Trump both interceded and took on Iran
directly.
And when they did it,
they stopped. It doesn't mean they would stop initially,
but they will stop significantly what they're doing in my
judgment.
And, and as long as we sit back
and continue to let these proxies do what they're doing
and ignore Iran,
Iran doesn't care that there's proxy casualties,
they're going to keep pushing them to be aggressive,
and that's going to continue.
If you want to get more on this,
go to pick up the Institute for Study of War.
It keeps you up to date on what's happening to
Ukraine,
Iran as well as with Israel.
General, thanks so much. Appreciate it.
Have a fantastic weekend.
Yeah, You guys too. Thank you very much.
All right.