Deploying old methods to resolve the situation ruining the Suez Canal trade
 The world appears helpless to stop missiles fired by Yemeni insurgents that have closed the Suez Canal to 90 per cent of its normal traffic.
What's so shameful is that non-state actors such as Houthi insurgents can evade effective counter measures by taking advantage of rules of war that legitimate states impose upon themselves.
Far too much reliance has been placed on Iron Dome defence systems that do not catch every incoming missile. What's more, Iron Dome is fearfully expensive while missiles are cheap.
In fact, too much emphasis is placed on how nice our military is. We are treated to comely uniformed wenches singing and dancing on Youtube, or troops cast in non-military settings, which is the wrong impression to convey.
We have lost sight of the basis of military behaviour and why soldiers do what they do and how rules of engagement came into being.
We do not kill prisoners of war because we are nice, but because we do not want the enemy to kill our troops should they become prisoners of war. The core of the Geneva Conventions that sets bounds on the beastly behavior of war is reciprocity.
That's the way it was, but not necessarily the way it is. Land mines have been banned, yet have been one of the main features of the current Russo-Ukrainian War with the widespread use of cluster munitions from which the initial explosion is not designed to kill or injure those in range of the blast but to disperse the hundreds of shoe mines over a wide area.
Civilians get involved because mines have killed and maimed civilians, often children, long after wars end. No one knows where mines were laid after the armies moved on. So the ban on landmines, though hardly universal, was the first time that the operative principle of reciprocity no longer applied.
The cry heard today is against civilian bombing. But the unpleasant truth is that civilian bombing is what brought about the German and Japanese surrenders in World War II. Only when civil society could no longer function did the military realize the game was up.
Not wanting to appear the bad guy in a world ruled by a leftist hostile media bent on undermining the patriarchy and against its every success, we refrain from doing what is advisable to restore the normal functioning of the Suez Canal.
So instead of relying on porous Iron Dome defense technology, or firing back at Houthi missile launch sites, which are mounted on trucks or truck trailers, and long gone before a counter-battery salvo can be fired, we wring our hands helplessly.
So why not do the obvious? Hit the source of the rockets - the Houthis, who are called "rebels", but have held Yemen's capital Sanaa (pop 3.4 million) for the better part of a decade. Meanwhile the so-called government of Yemen is holed-up in Aden (pop 1.07 million) on the coast.
Technically, bombing Sanaa can be done from Diego Garcia, south of the Maldives, officially the British Indian Overseas Territory, which is purpose-built for the task as it includes a state of the art US bomber base, which appears to be its principal function. Perhaps preliminary talks with the Houthis might have them willingly restore peace to the Suez Canal to avoid their capital be turned into talcum powder.
This is unlikely to happen. The West has largely demilitarized the military by insisting women play roles to which they are unsuited, which chiefly serves to make the men less military than they could be. It's dysfunctionality by design. China's People's Liberation Army is five per cent female, which is probably the level the US military was at in 1965. Today, US armed forces are 16 per cent female and there is a diversity drive to recruit even more.
One sees from TikTok shorts, Britain's army has given the Royal Horse Artillery at Horse Guards in London a sex change operation. And one gunner became so overwrought when her father came to admire her on guard duty that she broke down in tears before a substantial gathering of onlookers. This does not present a grim soldierly demeanor that one would like to present to the world.
Increasingly, this can be seen as an attempt to weaken the West by introducing measures and promoting individuals who detract from military effectiveness, while strengthening our adversaries' forces.
Thus, the nature of warfare has changed. In recent times, one could see the 9/11 attack as deploying aircraft as artillery, and the Tamil Tiger suicide commando raid at Colombo airport that same year as having the same effect, and having and even greater catastrophic effect in its smaller sphere of operations.
In one case the aircraft were the projectiles; in the other the aircraft were the targets. While 9/11 caused massive disruption and led to the Gulf Wars and the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The Colombo raid by knocking out the Air Lankan airline fleet on the ground, knocked out the country's No 2 GDP earner - tourism. The No 1 GDP earner was remittances from domestic workers overseas, the third being tea exports. The Muslim 9/11 attack did no such thing to the US economy.
It is ironic, given that the Russo-Ukrainian War is compared to game changing World War I, which ended cavalry's role as a serious force and introduced the tank. It is even more ironic that the current conflict may well herald the death of the tank itself given the number destroyed by space force guided munitions. And still more fitting that it should happen at Kursk, the site of the greatest tank battle in history in 1943.
Much of the game changing nature in our time has to do with public relations. The western media with the exception of a very few outlets support the left on a 95:5 basis whereas the voting public is closer to 50:50 based on electoral results.
What's needed immediately is a restoration of the rule-making principle of reciprocity. If they kill hostages, we kill hostages. If they stop, we stop. No more making nice just to be nice.
Of course, Hamas and Hezbollah will disregard such moves. So if the civilians are howling in pain, we have them howl more in the ears of the leaders they once voted for thinking a perpetual war with Israel was a good idea. And we do this until they can muster a ruling group to surrender and end the war and live in peace.
This is the way fanatical Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was make to surrender. That's what brought lasting peace. |
