They won't be able to keep that island, of course, should we decide to take it back. It is what is called in military science "a Forlorn Hope." With these Islamist movements the promised reward can be delegated to Allah, who will allegedly reward anyone who dies in the operation with paradise; the Houthis are Fiver Shi'ite Muslims, aligned with the Twelver Shi'ites who run the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and what is left of Iran. Iran claims it does not control the Houthis, but the Houthis are functionally a proxy with IRGC advisors.
Opposing them are rag-tag Yemeni government forces who have Saudi and American advisors. Not for the first time!
But hanging over the US effort are the memories of years of controversial targeting support American forces provided to Riyadh during the Obama and first Trump administrations that critics said contributed to a high number of civilian casualties.
Naturally, since the Houthis are very difficult to distinguish from civilians themselves and they take shelter among civilian populations. That has been a universal constraint in all of these wars we have fought since 9/11 happened 25 years ago today.
Five years ago, I posted my 9/11 poem for the last time. I was wrong to say the story had ended; some stories never do, like roads that go ever, ever on. The old al Qaeda is dead, but sandal-wearing guerrillas are still showing off captured American equipment, what very well may be an AI clone of bin Laden's descendant gave a speech celebrating it -- the US reported him dead in 2019 -- and there is little doubt that the United States will not find it tolerable to have Bab el-Mandeb closed, no more than we could tolerate having our skyscrapers knocked down with hijacked jetliners.
3 comments:
"....years of controversial targeting support American forces provided to Riyadh during the Obama and first Trump administrations..."
Isn't it wonderful to have a CIA so intent on screwing the pooch everywhere??
You can't judge the accuracy of the targeting from media reports; influencing the media has always been a center of gravity for these organizations. Just as they use AI deepfakes now, they used media influence (and intimidation/threats/violence where they could access local stringers) to affect the global narrative about the struggle.
That said, I don't actually remember the controversy being especially powerful during the Obama administration. People complained that his drone strikes hit weddings or funeral parties surprisingly often, but no amount of such complaints created a constraint on him because the media was overwhelmingly on his side. It's much more effective against Trump, where the media is baying for the next bad story about him anyway and won't look too closely at any stick you hand them to beat him with.
During my time with the Security Studies Group, the think tank we used to run during Trump I, we advocated very strongly against pulling US forces (mostly SOCCENT) out of Yemen. Trump was on about his desire to withdraw America from Middle East conflicts back then too, and thought Yemen was a nowhere battlefield he could cede at minimum cost. Bab el-Mandeb was the reason why he couldn't, I remember explaining at length and on several different occasions; but the fixed idea of pulling troops out of places was too strong. There are a few places you can't afford to pull out of, and these chokepoint straits are high on the list.
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