I read the article and that headline is clickbait as fuck. The tl;dr was that the US sent ships but…
It wasn’t deterring the Houthis and it wasn’t reassuring shipping so they might as well go and do something else.
Anybody that has ever tried to picnic outside knows that all it takes is a handful of persistent mosquitoes to ruin the whole thing and have the entire party pick up their gear and move it indoors.
The problem is that the Houthis are effectively irregular Iranian troops. You don’t win a war by hunting down every band of irregulars, because that wastes a lot of time and resources for little gain. You win a war by destroying the immobile assets that enable the enemy to supply the irregulars. The Houthis wouldn’t be firing Iranian anti-ship missiles if Iranian munitions factories were bombed, but the USA chooses not to do that.
IMO treating any attack by Iranian-made missiles as if it were launched by Iran would be a reasonable policy, but thanks to GWB’s Iraq adventure the USA is still too tired from that counterproductive war to vigorously defend its interests in the Middle East. (We did Iran a big favor by overthrowing a strong centralized government in Iraq which was quite hostile to Iran and replacing it with a weak government over which Iran wields a great deal of influence.)
The Houthis wouldn’t be firing Iranian anti-ship missiles if Iranian munitions factories were bombed, but the USA chooses not to do that.
big “the us didn’t really lose vietnam” cope energy
exploiting political reality is a valid military strategy
IMO treating any attack by Iranian-made missiles as if it were launched by Iran would be a reasonable policy
this stance would be an insane own-goal given what’s going on in ukraine
I read the article and that headline is clickbait as fuck.
it’s clickbait in the same way that vietnam defeated the us in that war they had that one time
probably the purpose of the us navy above all else is to protect shipping. like yes they’re set up to fight other navies and project power, but at the end of the day, that’s all so that nobody can fuck with the country’s logistics.
and even given how much money gets shoveled into it, it completely failed to do so against a group of fighters with a shoestring budget.
all it takes is a handful of persistent mosquitoes to ruin the whole thing and have the entire party pick up their gear
when i go to a picnic i don’t normally bring my billion-dollar mosquito killing machine, and when i do, i expect it to protect me
