Terror is a force multiplier; the West still does not know how to deal with it.
Sunday was the first day of Passover, and I went for a walk with one of our boys. Just before we got home, sirens sounded—a warning of another incoming Houthi missile. We ran home so that my wife would not worry. Outside of our house was a young couple with two young children in a stroller. We told them to come in; an older woman on her way to the Western Wall was also there, so we told her to come into our house as well. While the likelihood of getting hit by rocket shrapnel or parts of the interceptor missiles is nearly zero, nobody wants to be the poor schlub who has written on his headstone, “He didn’t go inside when he should have!” Rocket debris fell near Hebron.
When our new friends were in our house, I thought back to the attacks on London during World War 2. When one heard the air raid siren, he jumped into the nearest building. The V1 and V2 “vengeance” weapons were meant as weapons of terror. There was no way to stop a V2 rocket, and the British often lied as to their impact points so that the Nazis would recalibrate their aim and miss London completely. Terror is always a force multiplier: with little by way of attack, one can paralyze an entire population.
For over a year, the Houthis have shut down an important shipping lane and periodically fired projectiles at Israel. US Central Command is pounding Yemen, and daily, they publish pictures of planes from the Harry Truman and Carl Vinson heading out for attacks. Even with all of the bombing, which apparently has included B2 sorties, the Houthis can still fire at Israel, and I have not heard that shipping traffic has returned to normal in the Red Sea. When will the Houthi threat be put to bed for good?
The same problem is faced by Israel in Gaza. Hamas fired three missiles at the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon recently, where there was damage and one person was slightly injured. It would seem beyond belief that after 18 months of nearly continuous warfare that Hamas would still have launchers and missiles to fire. But they do. And when the sirens go off, everybody drops whatever he is doing and either runs to a secure room, formal bomb shelter or seeks safety out in the open. My wife and I once met the family of a boy who had been hit in the head with shrapnel from a missile fired from Gaza. When the sirens sounded, he and his mother got out of their car and hugged the street. When the all clear was given, they got up, and that’s when he was hit with a piece of a second rocket.
The difference between pacifying an enemy 90% and 100% is day and night. One can wear down an enemy and reduce his ability to do harm. To completely end his reign means total destruction, and the West since Korea has not been into total destruction. I don’t know if we have gotten squeamish or are terrified of using the biggest bombs we have, but the long and short is that we had a tie in Korea, a loss in Vietnam and you can judge Iraq and Afghanistan for yourself. We don’t know how to win anymore, and that is also true of Israel. Now, the game is not yet over with regards to Hamas, Lebanon, Syria and Iran. The biggest fear in Israel regarding Iran is a weak agreement with the US that does not fully address the nuclear issue but ties Israel’s hands from attacking. I think that President Trump is better than that; his man Witkoff—I have zero confidence in his ability to either get a real agreement that ends the Iranian nuclear bomb program or walk away and let the bombers take care of business.
The Houthis are the ideal case for either a small atomic bomb or an EMP pulse. The US is willing to use bunker busters and probably MOAB weapons, but because of the taboo of nuclear weapons, they will not use small dial-it-down bombs. Nobody is going to retaliate for the Houthis—not Iran, not Russia and not China. This would be the best case for finishing them off and showing that all of America’s arsenal is available for use as required. I know that they won’t do it, but how long will it take Centcom to finish off the Yemenites? Six months? A year? When will shipping traffic return to 100% in the Suez Canal?
There was a picture last week of an Israeli F-15 on X. I noticed that it had 4.5 Syrian flags, meaning MiGs or the like downed—but that was over 40 years ago! Israel is flying F-15s and F-16s that are twice the age of their pilots. Sure, there are brand new F-35s doing more work here than all of the F-35s in the world, but in the end, like in the US, Israel is holding on to old fighters and using them aggressively against foes everywhere. Just a few years ago, they retired the F-16s (which were then new) used in the attack against the Iraqi reactor in 1981.
The terrorists have the advantage that one missile or one attack can paralyze a large population. I remember when Israel killed Sheikh Yassin, the head of Hamas in Gaza. Hamas swore revenge. For a few weeks, you would have been hard-pressed to find anyone on the streets of downtown Jerusalem. So the terrorists can achieve their aims with very few people and/or missiles, whereas the Western armies need to crank up their efforts to completely neutralize a small, nimble fighting force. The West has never figured out how to destroy terrorists, only weaken them or reduce their area of activity. Destroying them would require a level of ruthlessness and violence that would probably lead to a UN or International Criminal Court investigation.
If the US and Israel want to destroy their terrorist enemies, they will have to change their tactics. While both are experiencing success in destroying men and material, the ability to fully end a terror threat will require tactics and violence beyond that so far employed. Can the West move beyond losing and stalemates and go for victory? Let’s hope so if we want to rid the world of Islamic terror.