Sparks: What we know about Trump's 'Project Freedom' in Strait of Hormuz

A crusade for freedom, launched without the consent of the governed, is merely the ancient tyranny of the strong over the weak, gilded with a new name.

Another man lights a lamp at noon, calling it freedom while he searches for an honest motive.

What practical difference does this project's noble name make to the sailor facing the sudden squall it summons?

The hardest force, applied to control the world's great waterways, will find itself worn away by the soft persistence of the current.

The creator, having animated his instrument of power with a grand purpose, now averts his eyes from the consequences of its violent awakening.

These grand designs for distant waters are drafted by men who forget the households that will bear their cost.

A silence hangs in the wardroom, thick as the humidity, unbroken by any mention of the letters that will not be written home.

Hateful things: the gleam of sunlight on a warship's rail the moment before the first gun sounds.

This freedom they speak of so loudly has never been mine to give or to take, only to seize for myself with these two hands.

Freedom is not a project to be announced but a path to be walked, preferably in silence and under cover of night.

Nothing soothes the conscience like giving a new name to an old habit, especially when the old habit involves gunboats.

This operational sequence, for all its mechanical precision, cannot compute the variable of unintended consequence.

Count the incidents, note the dates, trace the pattern of provocation until the euphemism 'freedom' collapses under the weight of its own hypocrisy.

We have always painted the same old tyranny with the newest, most fashionable words.