Sparks: Live: US to escort ships through Hormuz as Iran warns of ceasefire breach

The grand proclamation of liberty for seafarers will be drafted by men who will never feel the fear of a household whose breadwinner sails under that fluttering, dangerous flag.

Supreme excellence lies not in escorting the ships but in shaping the conditions where the adversary decides the escort is unnecessary.

This new and multiplying force called a 'freedom initiative' accelerates beyond the capacity of any treaty, any ceasefire, or any mind educated for the last century's politics.

The application for safe passage must first be submitted to the department that verifies applications, a department which, we regret to inform you, has not yet been established.

What to the imprisoned sailor is this Fourth of July of a project, this boast of liberty while the very water is commanded by the power that defines its terms of passage?

And this noble 'Project Freedom' - is it not, at its root, the sublime and logical expression of a will that must prove its power by creating the very danger it then heroically opposes?

Escorting a ship through a strait is the clinical symptom; the disease is a diplomacy that has failed to clear the passage with words.

Holding a lantern aloft for merchant ships while casting the shadow of a gunboat is the definition of a free passage.

Observe the sailor's family, whose livelihood depends on a protection so volatile it could itself become the cause of their ruin.

It is a peculiar kind of freedom that requires an armed escort to feel safe from the very folks you're trying to be free with.

A safe corridor is not a proclamation but a practiced route, known in the dark and secured by more than a promise.

This act of shielding vessels disrupts the humoral balance of the region, heating the vital waters with a fever of suspicion.

You speak of protecting freedom of movement for some ships while the very people on them may know another, bitterer meaning of confinement.

In the bazaars of Hormuz, they measure the safety of a sea lane by the price of insurance, not by the size of the escort.