The News Came at Breakfast
I heard about the ships while pouring coffee Tuesday morning. Three vessels hit by projectiles in the Strait of Hormuz. My first thought wasn't geopolitical — it was personal. My nephew is a merchant marine. He's worked the Gulf routes for six years. Every time I see a headline like this, I say a prayer and check my phone for a text that isn't there yet.
That's not an abstraction. That's a real kid on a real ship somewhere in the most dangerous waterway on earth, wondering if the people running this country are paying attention.
They're not. Not the way they should be.
The Strait Doesn't Forget Weakness
Twenty percent of the world's oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz. That's not a talking point — that's a fact that shapes every gas pump price in America and every heating bill in Europe. When Iranian-backed forces start hitting commercial vessels, they're not making a military statement. They're testing the fence to see if it's still electrified.
Under four years of the Biden administration, Iran watched sanctions get quietly softened, watched negotiators fly to Vienna to beg for a nuclear deal that Iran had already violated, and watched the United States freeze $6 billion in assets and then try to convince the American public that releasing the money somehow wasn't a concession. The fence stopped being electrified. Everyone in the region noticed.
This is what happens. Not as a metaphor. As a causal chain. You signal weakness. Actors who profit from chaos test that weakness. Sailors get hurt. Shipping lanes get disrupted. Gas prices spike. Families pay more to heat their homes. The consequences of foreign policy failures are not abstract — they show up in grocery bills and fuel costs and the phone calls nobody wants to make.
What a Christian Nation Owes Its Seafarers
There's a reason the book of Psalms talks so much about the sea. People who work the water understand danger in a way that people in air-conditioned offices do not. They're exposed. They're dependent on forces larger than themselves. And they're dependent, in ways those of us on dry land forget, on whether our country is willing to project enough strength to keep those lanes safe.
The United States Navy exists in large part to ensure freedom of navigation. That's not imperialism — that's the basic compact that made global trade possible after World War II. When Houthi forces or Iranian proxies or whoever is behind today's attack starts hitting commercial ships with impunity, they're not just attacking shipping companies. They're attacking the entire architecture of international commerce that American military strength built and maintained.
We owe it to every merchant mariner, every Navy sailor, every family waiting for a text message at breakfast, to be absolutely clear: attacking American-linked vessels in international waters is not something we tolerate. Not now. Not ever. The response to this attack should be swift, proportionate, and unmistakable in its message.
Prayers and Politics
I'll keep praying for my nephew and everyone else out there on the water. But prayer without action is just wishful thinking dressed up in religious language. The Christian tradition I come from has always understood that protecting the innocent is a moral obligation — not just a policy preference.
Whoever authorized those projectile attacks on those three ships is counting on the United States to issue a strongly-worded statement and move on. That's been the playbook for years. It's time to prove them wrong. Strength isn't aggression. Strength is making clear, once and for all, that the cost of attacking American interests on the open water is higher than any political or financial gain is worth.
My nephew deserves that clarity. So does every other family waiting for a text that isn't there yet.
