As a U.S.-led coalition steps up airstrikes to suppress Houthi attacks on international shipping, progressives are accusing President Biden of going back on his promise to keep America out of “forever wars” in the Middle East. 

It’s a bum rap that confuses cause and effect. What’s the greater evil, an outbreak of maritime terrorism or the United States using force to stop it? On the left, the habit of blaming America first dies hard.

Biden is walking a tightrope between a U.S. public leery of being dragged back into the region’s endemic violence by the Israel-Hamas war, and Houthi attacks that are disrupting routes where about 12 percent of global trade passes through. 

Americans don’t relish open-ended military engagements anywhere, but our enemies get a vote, too. Today’s Middle East landscape is littered with Iran-backed jihadist groups who see themselves as waging a Holy War to erase Israel from the map. They know they can’t do that without driving the United States from the region.