...and it's been done before:
Should the US, Great Britain, and other nations, without and UN auspices, announce immediately that force will be used if any effort is made to close the canal.
Questions for some who might know.
1. Could the Canal be blocked if a ship was scuttled somewheres in the water?
2. Obviously artillery/missiles anywheres along the Canal could take ships transiting under fire. Would a cordon, say a few miles wide on either side need to be established?
Obama help the US economy?
This is one of those crisis moments that the Left loves!
The Middle East blows up, the canal falls into rabid Muslim hands (sorry, that is redundant).
Obama pushes for MORE government control and capitulation to the UN.
It’s 1956 again!
Worked so well the last time this was tried.
Two things you can count on;
1. Egypt ceases to be a tourist destination.
2. Oil futures will skyrocket regardless of the Suez status.
BTW, the canal is pretty narrow and could easily be blocked.
The US military is far too occupied at present integrating homosexuals into the ranks to be bothered with anything as trifling as stabilizing the Suez Canal.
...and it's been done before:
The 67 and 73 wars showed that there is no way to keep the Canal open. In answer to question #1, yes. A scuttled barge or tanker effectively closes it. Crews trying to clear the canal become sniper targets and leave.
There is nothing we can do about this except ride out the consequences of diverted resources on world commodity prices.
A former Carter State Dept official from the Iran hostage crisis (he must’ve been very young, ‘cause he still looks fairly young) — just said on FOX: “We either need to have a back-bench in Egypt, or else a backbone; and we have neither”. I take that to mean we are stuck with just seeing what comes of it. Everything we could do to intervene would be counterproductive.
The prospect exists of having images of brocko burned in effigy, and, of course, the American flag. I think the former prospect might just put brocko into a fetal position, sucking on his thumb (or his favorite “other”).
Yes the Suez is very narrow and could easily be blocked. I doubt that much of our imported oil goes through the canal since the really large tankers cannot use it. So it is not as big a direct issue for us as it is for Europe. And for them it is critical.
If it comes to military involvement, let’s see if Europe steps up to the plate, or as usual, begs us behind the scenes to do it, while publicly berating us for our “cowboy” interventionism.
I would say don’t worry about it. It’s more a strategic asset for Europe and Southwest Asia. The French and the British ought to be more worried about it, and I assure you that they are, and will likely be the ones to “do something about it,” long before the US does. Also, it’s not likely to be shut down over this. Whoever ends up on top will want to keep it open for their own reasons.
Drill, baby, drill!
That motto should have been heeded...
to your question “Has anyone else noticed, amid the continuous coverage of the unfolding events in Egypt, that there is hardly any coveage/discussion as to...”
i’ve been listening to some of these to get a bit more than our govt allows to be broadcast
http://www.wrn.org/listeners/#home-listeners/
if anyone knows of others, please share...thanks
Why? Because just about zero goods transported to the USA by ship use the Suez Canal. Most conventional cargoes use big container ships, imported cars travel directly from Europe, South Korea and Japan to US ports with big car carrier ships, and crude oil from various sources around the world travel to USA using very large crude carrier (VLCC) and ultra large crude carrier (ULCC) ships that moor at offshore terminals for loading to smaller oil tankers to offload onshore or directly sent onshore via pipelines. And just about none of these big cargo ships will fit in the Suez Canal fully loaded.
The big loser in all this is Europe, since many goods shipped from Asia come through the Suez Canal. A HUGE winner in all this is Russia, because they can now charge almost any price they want for crude oil and natural gas sent to western Europe through pipelines.
A radicalized Egypt so close to Israel and the rest of the Med Sea is a real problem.
There is never a good time to have a bad president. Aren’t we lucky to be saddled with a president who is hard at work to stick it to America, but good. Sarah, we need you now.
Nothing, the canal isn’t as important to the world as it is to the arabs.
Most oil tankers are too big to go through the canal.
If the U.S. (and Israel) were determine to keep it open, it would stay open. In order to do so, they would have to claim (and maintain) jurisdiction over it.
Of course, this is not back in the day where kicking ass meant just two words, and not a 6-month debate on our 'moral compass'. Frankly, I am more concerned with how Egypt simply turned off the Internet. But I guess that's something to be addressed in a separate post.
You can’t protect the suez without controlling all the land in the area. I’d say if the suez gets blockaded, there’s no opening it by force. It would be a death trap.