Western militaries are having a hard time defeating enemies made of farmers and goat herders.
Fun fact: Yemen is farther from the state of Israel than is Iran. When Israel goes there with its air force, it requires longer sorties with additional refuelings. Israel once again bombed the Houthis in Yemen after a missile with a cluster warhead was fired on Friday night at the Jewish state. As in previous visits, huge explosions and large pillars of smoke were seen in Saana after the attack. This round apparently involved three dozen munitions dropped on the presidential palace, an oil storage facility and some additional Houthi weapons sites. The massive explosions and billowing smoke certainly look impressive. The question is if the destruction is making any difference.
Someone on X noted that the U.S. has not fired a torpedo in anger in 80 years. If one thinks of the hundreds of fast attack and ballistic missile submarines produced during those decades, he realizes that it is quite a feat that no torpedo has been needed against an enemy. In all fairness, many Tomahawk missiles have been fired at targets in Iraq, Iran and elsewhere, so it’s not like the Navy has been completely bored. The Brits fired torpedoes and sank a key capital ship of the Argentinian navy in the Falkland Islands kerfuffle. So they are only 40 years off of their last exploding torpedo. While the frequency and intensity of wars have gone down since World War II, our ability to win conclusively has receded as well. When the U.S. left Vietnam, the war was not lost. The U.S. did not succeed in defeating the North Vietnamese or Viet Cong, but the war was not lost until the Congress stopped sending military assistance to South Vietnam, which then fell. Why couldn’t the U.S. soundly defeat the Vietnamese or Taliban? Why is Israel unable to crush Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Houthis in a clear and resounding manner? There are two problems: one of values and the other of war-fighting methods.
Look at Hamas. They claim to revel in death. When you think of say an A-10 attack jet, there are several features designed to protect the pilot. The pilot sits in a titanium tub to protect from ground fire. The fuel tanks are self-sealing should they be punctured. Now imagine designing the A-10 for Hamas that does not care about the lives of its pilots (kind of like the Soviets who ran a nuclear airplane without proper shielding for the pilots, who died a few years later). You could save a fortune in money and weight on the plane if you don’t care about one-way flights. Kamikaze flights led to thousands of American deaths during the battle of Okinawa. When your enemies are not afraid of death or actually elevate it into a good, they fight differently. They take risks that Western armies would not and may expose themselves to danger in a manner that a traditional opponent would not consider. Look at the Hamas guys running out of tunnels with RPGs directly at Israeli positions. Sometimes they succeed; most times, they are wiped out. The Japanese elevated the status of the Kamikaze pilots, and for the latter it was a great honor to die for the emperor and take an American ship with its crew down to the bottom with them.
But another feature of our jellyfish enemies is a lack of formal structure. When your enemy has fixed bases and known military tactics, you can plan to attack and disrupt his forces. But do the Houthis have a clear command structure? Does bombing their buildings actually do anything? If Iran can get them missiles, they will fire them off at Israel. Ostensibly all weapons come by sea and Israel claimed recently that it will place a complete sea blockade on Houthi ports. Can they really choke off their weapons? If not, then the occasional missile will keep coming as they have been for the past two years. The ragtag Houthis completely disrupted the world shipping system by making travel in a key shipping lane very dangerous. The Egyptian economy was devastated by lost revenue from the Suez Canal. The U.S. Navy, the Israeli air force, and Israeli navy have not figured out how to put these people out of business for good. Attacks on the airport, ports, power generation systems, missile storage sites and oil depots have all looked impressive but have not stopped the Houthis’ ability or desire to fire missiles intermittently at Israel or passing freighters. No doubt that Iran goads them on to fire so as to not fire themselves and cause Israel to return to the skies of Tehran. Still, at this point, they should either be out of stock or begging the mullahs to leave them out due to a lack of personnel or equipment. Neither seems to be the case.
England, Russia and the U.S. failed to conquer Afghanistan. One soldier said that if they captured a town and drove out the Taliban, as soon as they left, the Taliban would return. Nothing short of mass murder of everyone present can seem to stop the existence of the bad guys and their willingness to keep fighting. It would be easier to fight Rommel’s fixed tank formations, however formidable, than to fight a group of people who fire RPGs and vanish into the local crowd. I am NOT advocating for killing everybody, but since the bad guys can melt into the local population, and we are hard-pressed to identify them when they wear no uniform and can abandon weapons quickly, we can’t kill these enemies. They fight, disappear, reappear and fight again. Nothing short of a nuclear bomb or a very strong EMP can stop the Houthis. The U.S. Navy tried. The Houthis promised to behave, so the aircraft carriers left. The Houthis started firing again on cargo ships. Israel blew up many buildings and their major ports. No doubt she also killed some senior Houthi leaders and commanders. But they always seem to regroup, get new leaders, sneak in more missiles and keep firing. On Friday night, our front door moved in and out, something it does when a plane’s sonic boom passes by. One boy went outside and heard a mild boom in the distance. We later learned that it was probably a THAAD missile trying to take down the latest Yemenite projectile that included for the first time cluster munitions to kill as many people as possible.
Israel is killing on a near daily basis Hezbollah members in cars or on motorcycles. The beepers, invasion and intense aerial attacks degraded the Shiite terror group significantly, but they are not out. They still have weapons and have sworn not to give them up. Can you finish these groups off? Apparently only with some type of agreement, because on the battlefield they shape-shift and keep going. The same is true of Hamas, weakened but by no means out. They move their members and weapons via many of the still extant tunnels and keep fighting. Every now and then they fire short-range missiles towards the towns around Gaza. After nearly two years, they are by no means dead.
Are there no more Pattons, Grants, or LeMays left in the world? Israel this week struck a “hospital” that even Gazans say that Hamas took over completely. They saw a camera recording IDF troop movements so they attacked the structure. They killed Hamas terrorists masquerading as journalists. Maybe some civilians were killed. Israel apologized and said that it would investigate. No, no, no, and no. Hamas started the war. All dead are on its head. If you hit one legitimate target, then there is no basis for any investigation and certainly no apology. Fight like you want to win. Destroy the enemy. Stop apologizing for winning. That’s why the West never wins against the jellyfish.