Saudi Arabia has been leading a series of airstrikes against the Iran-backed Shiite Houthi militants since March 26. Above, a Saudi soldier fired a mortar at the Saudi border with Yemen on Tuesday. Photo: Reuters
Mark Perry, American Conservative: The Military Officials Who Knew Saudi Arabia Would Fail
Privately they've been saying for years that Riyadh can't win in Yemen and that we shouldn't have given the Houthis up.
While it’s seems axiomatic that most Americans suffer from historical amnesia, that’s not necessarily true for the U.S. military. And as America and Iran were sprinting towards a military confrontation last week, a recently retired senior U.S. military officer expounded on what he called “the bumbling, incompetent and feckless stupidity of it all.”
The target of the officer’s ire was not Donald Trump (whom he admires) or Mike Pompeo (who he doesn’t), but Saudi Arabia’s March 2015 decision to go to war against the Iranian-allied Houthi tribal movement in Yemen —“which is,” he argues, “how all of this nonsense got started in the first place.”
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WNU Editor: I lost count on how many posts that I put up when Saudi Arabia began their military campaign in Yemen that predicted Saudi Arabia's defeat. The Houthis have a long history of fighting conflicts, and they have the geography and will to fight it effectively.
Will is not enough to win, but is necessary.
ReplyDeleteOf course, if your enemy does not have sufficient will, then your will with enough intelligence is enough.
The Germans had a lot of will. So did the Russians. Numbers do tell. But the Russians did have the will and the numbers.