Bombing the Houthis

[IvanV]

The Saudis spent much of the last several years bombing the Houthis to pieces, but it was a complete failure. Despite this large-scale military attack on them, the Houthis extended their control from a small area of NW Yemen to cover most of the western highlands, including the capital Sanaa. This area is where the great majority of Yemen's approx 35m people live. (Yes, there are more people in Yemen than in Saudi Arabia.) The Saudi bombing is estimated to have killed about 20,000 people. The Saudis eventually gave up, as it was killing lots of people and not achieving any practical military objective, and attracting widespread condemnation.

So is it just pointless and unnecessarily provocative for the US and UK to bomb them? They have specifically attacked the missile launching sites which were used to attack shipping, and avoided killing lots of civilians. But is that going to have much effect on a nation that has continued major missile attacks despite all the Saudi bombing? Can we really be any more militarily effective than the Saudis were? Such excellent records we have in places like Afghanistan.

But the Houthis are attacking passing shipping, and more generally acting as Iran's provocateurs. So is it necessary to demonstrate that we won't just sit passively without response to this? Clearly we should have responded much sooner and much more actively to Putin's foreign adventures, and when we didn't he picked off more and more. So many people failed to see Putin for what he is for so long.

The Iranians themselves have just hijacked another ship. How should we respond to that?

Should the US and UK have sought wider international support for this response? In Iraq, it was a huge mistake for the US and UK to act on their own, without that wider international support.

And Putin laughs at us, delighted at the expanding distractions from his own international misbehaviour.

[TopBadger]

We had to respond and I expect this was the only thing left in the locker after all the warnings given.

[jimbob]

I imagine that targeting some anti shop ballistic missile launchers and maybe some of the other bigger military infrastructure might be possible

[Martin_B]

There's a scene from West Wing where life-long liberal President Bartlett has to react to a terrorist threat in the Middle East. His advisers propose bombing military targets as a proportional response and Bartlett says why not go for something bigger which might actually act as a deterrent.

Leo: And you think ratching up the body count's gonna act as a deterrent? Then you are just as dumb as these guys who think that capital punishment is going to be a deterrent for drug kingpins. As if drug kingpins didn't live their day to day lives under the possibility of execution. And their executions are a lot less dainty than ours and tend to take place without the bother and expense of due process.
Bartlet: We are doing nothing.
Leo: We are not doing nothing. Four high rated military targets.
Bartlet: And this is good?
Leo: Of course it's not good, there is no good. It's what there is. It's how you behave if you're the most powerful nation in the world. It's proportional, it's reasonable, it's responsible, it's merciful. It's not nothing, four high rated military targets.
Bartlet: Which they'll rebuild again in six months.
Leo: So we'll blow 'em up again in six months! We're getting really good at it.

The US (and the rest of the coalition, but let's face it, mainly the US) could hit the Houthis much harder than the Saudis ever did, and with much more effective weapons, but a non-proportional response just ratchet-ups the body count and pushes the coalition into the territory of aggressor and bully compared to defender (comparable to Israel in Gaza).