US allies need to get a grip step up and help open the Strait of Hormuz

With friends like these: One real virtue of the Iran war is how it exposes once-hidden disloyalties.That goes for the various cranks on the right we considered the other day, most prominently podcaster Tucker Carlson, formally “evicted” from MAGA by President Donald Trump and sadly now claiming the CIA is out to frame him.Other big-ish righty names — Steve Bannon, Megyn Kelly, Marjorie Taylor Greene — are also denouncing Operation Epic Fury, marginally undermining a mission that has strong support among GOP voters and even more so among MAGA ones.They’re not so much dividing the right, in other words, as declaring themselves unbalanced (or perhaps overly reliant on a fringe audience for their clicks).A far bigger deal are the US “allies” declining Trump’s call for help, even if just symbolic, to open the Strait of Hormuz.Even though little oil or natural gas flows through there to America, both are vital to the global markets Europeans and others now scrambling for rocks to hide beneath depend on.“This is not our war, we have not started it,” squirms German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.   “It’s never been envisioned to be a NATO mission,” flutters UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.Trump’s not asking for help in the war; he’s suggesting that countries that benefit from oil and gas that goes through the Strait should help get it flowing again.Much as many of these same nations did join in NATO’s Operation Ocean Shield and the European Union’s Operation Atalanta to counter Somali piracy a decade or two back — with the navies of India and China playing an important role, too.Then again, most of our European “allies” have let their navies shrink to almost nothing since then, with Starmer’s Britain especially pathetic.Subscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter! Please provide a valid email.

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