This whole write up is interesting. He covers the conflict with the Houthis but what has me spun up is his proposal during the Vietnam war. Dude had his fangs out way back then. Check this out...
Amphibious Raid
In 1972, I was a Marine Corps Second Lieutenant. I wrote an article for the Marine Corps Gazette suggesting we could break the stalemate with a massive amphibious raid into North Vietnam.
I proposed a 60 to 90-day incursion that would destroy their standing army, military infrastructure, and ports. I advocated a sea-based option because the Vietnamese insurgents would be less likely to disrupt our lines of communications and would never know where we would strike next.
It was the Cold War, and most American policymakers feared a large-scale incursion would bring intervention by the Soviet Union or China. I argued that by the time either of those could effectively intervene the Marines would be gone and that it would take Hanoi years before it would be able to launch a successful invasion of South Vietnam.
I believed this would give the South time to build an effective, productive, and Western-oriented democracy such as South Korea was becoming.
Not surprisingly, the administration was unwilling to take strategic advice from a Second Lieutenant and the country’s mood would not have supported major military action. By 1975, South Vietnam had collapsed under a Northern invasion.
Many Americans who did not live through that period (and some who did) believe Saigon fell to Viet Cong peasants armed only with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. In actuality, the South was overrun by a modern combined arms North Vietnamese army using tanks, artillery, and Soviet-built anti-aircraft missiles — exactly the army that my concept would have killed in the cradle.
It would have worked then, and it would work now in Yemen if we still had the Navy and Marine Corps to accomplish it.
Read it all here.
The focus is on the Houthis but like I said I find this fascinating. Can you imagine how that war would have turned out if we had actually launched on this plan? The weird thing is that I would bet body parts he isn't the only one that was thinking this way.
Oh and let me end with this.
Conducting any kind of ground action in Yemen would play into our enemy's hands at least in my opinion.
Yes I know an amphibious raid is limited in scope and duration, but I also know that optics are important in this day and age.
The problem is an international one. Diverting ships around the range of Houthi missiles/drones is causing price spikes that affect the planet.
But have you noticed that the UN is silent. We reflexively reached for a military solution...a halfway military solution.
Just a few strikes by B-52's and B-1's could knock this shit off with a quickness. The optics would be terrible. Alot of civilians would be killed but it would stop the proble.
