The last over 20-years of the so-called global war on terror (GWOT) has provided ample case studies demonstrating that the vastly superior American armed forces have extreme difficulty in bringing third world rag-tag Islamist armies in far flung provinces to heel, especially when they possess a continual external weapons pipeline of bombs, drones, and even ballistic missiles.
This is still a reality as US Central Command (CENTCOM) faces down Yemen's Iran backed Houthis (Ansarallah movement). The Houthis not only are alive and well-armed, even after a half-decade plus of the war with the Saudi-UAE-US coalition which started in 2015, but also after some dozen waves of US-UK-Israel coalition bombings in the wake of the Oct.7 Hamas terror attack on southern Israel. Red Sea passage for most of the globe's commercial vessels and tankers remains effectively closed.
President Trump starting Sunday has clearly opted for a big-stick, war solution to the ongoing blockage of Red Sea shipping, hitting the Yemeni capital of Saana with at least three rounds of major airstrikes. The Houthis in turned claimed a major assault on the USS Truman aircraft carrier. The Pentagon has since denied that its warships were hit, claiming multiple intercepts of drones and missiles - but this only seems a 'new beginning' and not the end of hostilities.
