US military admits that Yemen’s Houthis have them beaten.

Right, so the Houthis are officially unstoppable. They can’t be stopped by western forces and this is coming straight from the horse’s mouth so to speak and the reason for that is because the US can no longer keep up the sustained campaign they have been waging against the Houthis, who have been retaliating against Israeli genocide in Gaza since last November, attacking shipping in rubber boats, with drones and missile strikes, all Iran backed in case you weren’t aware, you know our media, I’m not sure they hammer that point home often enough.
So the question now is how much longer can the US keep this up, how much more American public money, misnamed so often as we hear as tax dollars, is going to be sunk into attacking the Houthis to excuse Israel as they continue to refuse ceasefires, continue to commit daily attacks in Gaza, continue to block aid, until Genocide Joe is finally forced to admit enough is enough, or will that day just never come, no matter how much more ineffective US forces continue to become?
Right, so in the last few days we’ve had a tacit admission from US forces in the Red Sea, that they cannot continue to take on the Houthis who are successfully continuing to harass and attack shipping in the Red Sea intended for Israel, or that are either flagged or owned by American or British interests. The Houthis have in effect won. They’ve beaten the US Navy, at sea, without a navy of their own and it really is hilarious that this poor Arab nation has been able to do so for so long and to the point now that America carrying on as it has been, is now being seen by the military themselves as unviable.
Part of the Houthis success has been their geographical good fortune, the fact that so much of the worlds shipping, some 20% of it, relies on passing through the Suez Canal from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean, but to get there, shipping has to access the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean beyond, and passing through both the Gulf of Aden and the narrow 16 mile wide Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, the Strait particularly, brings all shipping very close to the Yemen coastline and within range of Houthi attacks. As time has gone on, the Houthis have been provided with even more advanced weaponry, having gone from dinghies and drones to now having ballistic missiles capable of reaching the Arabian Sea and the Mediterranean itself, giving them even more range, making them all the more dangerous, though primarily their attacks have continued to be from using what are basic, cheap ordnance, as they’ve used all along so far and they’ve done so to great effect.
According to the maritime intelligence company Windward, container ship traffic through the Red Sea has fallen by 67% and tanker traffic has dropped by half, driving prices up for goods and oil globally, as shipping has had to be forced around the tip of Africa instead. 20,000 commercial ships pass through the Red Sea every year, so the scale of the Houthis success in shipping interference is huge. More than 80 direct attacks on shipping have taken place, with one ship being sunk, the British owned Rubymar, though the crew were of course rescued because the Houthis always do that.
Another ship was struck this week and was left in danger of sinking as well, the Tutor, a Greek owned bulk carrier, which was hit by a drone boat.
Then of course there are the claims that the Houthis have hit US warships too, which the US have vehemently denied yet their actions afterwards have still begged questions as to whether that has actually been true or not.
Although there have sadly been fatalities as a result of Houthis attacks, one apparently on that recent strike on the Tutor it’s been announced, it hasn’t been their aim to take lives, otherwise far more would have been lost, you’d expect the attacks to be much more indiscriminate as we’ve seen by Israel and far more Houthis have been killed in US and UK airstrikes on land targets to try and take the Houthis out, try and destroy their arsenals and this has always been the rub for me. The Houthis have always said that if the atrocities in Gaza being committed by Israel and enabled by their allies like the US and UK ended, the attacks on shipping would end too. Instead the US and UK forces have heaped out even more death and destruction in the Middle East, to excuse Israel doing that as well, expending so much US public money in the process and achieving nothing, as the Houthis simply dust themselves down and start again. They simply aren’t programmed to quit and this has been shown in conflict after conflict that they have been involved in.
But now, in a piece by the Wall Street Journal, which has spoken the Commander of one of the US ships currently in the Red Sea, the USS Laboon, which shot down a Houthi ballistic missile, the first seen used by them, back in January, this cannot carry on and that US forces, despite having had their deployments extended, can’t sustain this defence of shipping and Israeli interests indefinitely:
‘In addition to shooting down incoming missiles and drones, the U.S. and other countries have carried out several waves of airstrikes against launchers, radar installations and other facilities used by the Houthis in its attacks.
The longer the Houthi attacks continue, the more likely it is that a U.S. warship could be hit, said Frank McKenzie, a retired Marine general. “There’s always a chance that something happens and one of our ships could be struck, and that chance only increases the longer we allow the situation to continue,” he added.
The Navy says it has spent about $1 billion on munitions used in defending the Red Sea, conducting more than 450 strikes and intercepting more than 200 drones and missiles since November when the attacks began.
U.S. officials worry that the conflict is simply not sustainable for the U.S. defense industrial base, already strained by the demands for weaponry from Ukraine and Israel.
“Their supply of weapons from Iran is cheap and highly sustainable, but ours is expensive, our supply chains are crunched, and our logistics tails are long,” said Emily Harding of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “We are playing whack a mole and they are playing a long game.”’
$1bn spent fighting the Houthis and they’ve effectively just taken that cash and dumped it over the side of the ship for all the effect they’ve had. Meanwhile Genocide Joe signs more cheques for more US cash to be blown. $30m reaper drones, million pound missiles and they’re being used to take out drones which cost peanuts by comparison. Of course the US forces are more powerful, but the impact they are having is minimal. The real battle here is being fought economically, not militarily, since the Houthis don’t have big money to spend – sure they have Iran supplying them to some degree – but the Houthis are proving they don’t need it either. The US goes out there with an open wallet thinking they’ll take this rebel group down fast for daring to stand up to a nation literally committing genocide and like so many others who’ve tried it on with the Houthis, have found it isn’t that easy, to the point now where the cost is being talked about openly in the press by the military themselves.
The US is still arming Zelensky in Ukraine every time he comes around with his begging bowl, there is no supply shortage of cheap drones to the Houthis, even if supplies from Iran have been intercepted, so in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t having much of an impact either. As the lady from the think tank makes clear, it’s like the US are playing whack a mole and for the most part, they’re missing insofar as the effect they are having. The very nature of the Houthis actions, blockading the Red Sea are not just affecting commercial shipping traffic, but military traffic too. Getting supplies to the US vessels is also subject to coming under attack itself. Add into that the fact the Houthis can by and large get drones off the shelf and Iran will keep supplying them come what may, versus the US logistics issues of having to get sign off for everything it wants to use all along the military supply chain, which also of course adds to the expense, means the Red Sea conflict between Houthi and Western forces comes down to a matter of cost and at what point will the US administration decide we’ve blown enough cash on this, especially when they’ve spent £1bn to date and functionally got nowhere? The Houthis have won and will only stop when Israel gets out of Gaza and ends it’s atrocities. At what point does this obvious, humanitarian answer, finally become the right financial one, to the point US and UK politicians, along with other pro Israeli interests admit they’ve lost this one?
Is it necessarily true however that the Houthis DO have an infinite supply of weaponry? Their use of some alternative ordnance recently has implied that they too might be running dry as this video recommendation will give you some more food for thought on and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.