Houthis and hemorrhoids. About the same thing if you ask me. Both are nagging irritants with potential for serious problems if left untreated. Our U.S. Navy and Air Force along with other interested parties in the region are serving as a sort of Preparation H in the situation, but so far that’s applying ointment when radical surgery is needed.
The Houthis are tough, tenacious hombres who manage somehow to maintain a steadily flowing supply pipeline of weapons and technology from Iran, the background culprits in a costly disruption of global commerce. We’ve been letting them get away with it by playing defense rather than mounting an all-out, no-holds-barred offense.
Military records indicate there have been nearly 200 Houthi attacks on U.S. warships and nearly the same number of air and surface shots at commercial vessels in the past two years. That has forced our Navy into a frenetic pace of defensive combat that’s close to what sailors experienced in World War II. In fact, some analysts say our Navy has fired more air-defense missiles over the past two years than it had in the previous 30 years. Diplomats and bureaucrats may insist it’s not war, but tell that to the sailors aboard the carriers, cruisers, and destroyers standing near-constant watches at action stations in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Unfortunately for the long run, it amounts to using expensive missiles to shoot down cheap drones or unmanned attack vessels launched from Houthi sanctuaries in Yemen.
The President recently doffed his MAGA hat and replaced it with a Commander-in-Chief helmet, going to social media with a message to the Houthis: Your time is up and your attacks must stop starting today. I wasn’t privy to the Signal App meeting that followed but I think all hands got the message. Serious, concentrated air and cruise missile strikes ensued and continue time now. It’s a valid and much-needed escalation but it all seems a bit knee-jerk to me. More topical ointment to avoid treating the condition that’s causing the problem.
We should be listening to veterans like Admiral James Stavridis, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, who notes that we’ve been largely playing defense in the Red Sea when we should be playing an aggressive form of offense. The Admiral favors a four-phase military operation to deal with the Houthis and send a clear message to Iran which is the background culprit in all this costly disruption of global commerce. The Admiral advocates a sort of find ’em, fix ’em, and flatten ’em approach which reads like something from George Patton, Chester Nimitz, or Chesty Puller.
Beyond standard tit-for-tat strikes at missile launch-sites, Admiral Stavridis wants us to damn the (Iranian) torpedoes and go full-speed ahead with strikes at the Houthis where they would to the most damage. He recommends targeting virtually all Houthi military-purposed vessels, especially those with surface-search radars which are sailing as innocent fishing junks. Included would be unmanned speed boats, maintenance facilities, ammunition caches, plus drone construction and arming centers. We’ve got enough intel sources in the area (Saudi Arabia) to let us know where those vital sites are located.
Reports from the area indicate the current round of deeper coalition strikes has included targets like Kamaran Island near the Yemeni port city of Salif, an identified center of the Houthi anti-ship weapons and technology. We should have leveled that site and a number of others long ago. Here’s hoping the multi-national military planners are including more targets like that in the current air and cruise missile offensive. This situation has gone on long enough. The U.S. and our coalition partners in the area need to shake the gloves off like enraged hockey players and start drawing serious blood. Everyone with an IQ above room temperature knows Iran is playing the Houthis like meat puppets in an eternal war with western powers. That’s not going to disappear overnight but we can show them it’s a losing proposition. They’ll get the memo shortly after we destroy their sycophants in Yemen.
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