In 1805, President Thomas Jefferson ordered the U.S. Navy and Marines to stop Barbary pirates from disrupting shipping in the Mediterranean Sea. This successful measure is captured in the Marine Corps Hymn stanza “…to the shores of Tripoli….”

When he takes office, President Trump should repeat Jefferson’s orders and commit our full military power to eliminating attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Houthi terrorists are attacking oil tankers in that narrow waterway, forcing vessels bearing goods to take longer routes around Africa, raising costs and gasoline prices for U.S. consumers. Terrorism is taking its toll.
I was an Army Infantry officer for 20 years, so I know that committing American military personnel to protect energy security should not be taken lightly. And after my Army career, I became an oil refining and trading oil executive. This combined experience convinces me that our military can eliminate the Houthi threat, reopen shipping lanes, and allow normal market competition to lower fuel prices.
President Trump has a bold approach to domestic energy, and he may be the first president in decades to dramatically change the marketplace. He ought to quickly take additional actions to lower crude oil prices by eliminating oil sanction policies, rebuilding U.S. energy infrastructure, and streamlining domestic gasoline specifications.
The current crude oil sanctions have only raised the price of crude oil and gasoline. Sanctions on Iranian, Russian, and Venezuelan crude oil have led to elaborate illegal schemes to sell their oil. Imagine your local store refusing to sell products to you while willingly selling to your neighbor who plans to promptly resell them to you. It’s a shell game that adds costs for American consumers. This illegal underground economy, along with Houthi terrorism, is adding $25 per barrel to the price of oil.
For decades, Americans paid high fuel prices due to OPEC and unfriendly oil producing countries conspiring to keep costs...