A bomb is just a bomb: Intent, strategy, and will make it mean something

As time goes by.

By J.E. Dyer, OPTIMISTIC CONSERVATIVE     15 January 2024

Bonus: the Houthis are firing at U.S.-linked shipping.

Moreover, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed credit itself for an attack in Iraq that would equate to the most recent attack on U.S. assets in Erbil.

That’s a major escalation:  an “in your face” political signal.

Continuing with the original article.

[Very important.  See the final note at the end on command/control and commander’s intent for the coalition strikes in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq. – J.E.]

This will be brief.  The central text is a pair of passages from some email correspondence this weekend, after the U.S. and UK strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen last Thursday night.

The footage of carrier air wing catapult shots and photos of a Tomahawk launch from a U.S. warship were very dramatic, and understandably gratifying for observers after months of unanswered provocations, not only from the Iran-backed Houthis but from the Iran-backed Iraqi militias in Iraq and Syria.

U.S. Navy destroyer fires a Tomahawk Missile toward a target in Yemen on Jan. 11, 2024. US Navy Photo

An important caveat, however, is that we didn’t really do all that much.  Basically, we retaliated for the Houthis’ attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.  We made a lagging reaction that won’t have a deterrent effect, assuming history is a guide.

This was exactly former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s strategy in Vietnam – the incremental approach of Operation Rolling Thunder – and it didn’t achieve deterrence of North Vietnam.  (The Tet Offensive was an undeterred response to Rolling Thunder.  Ironically – or tellingly – the unacknowledged success of American and South Vietnamese forces in defeating the Tet Offensive, in old-fashioned win-versus-lose combat, is what served to deter a double-down in exploitation of it by Hanoi.)

Other examples are Somalia in 1992-93, where extremely limited punch-pulling retaliation had no deterrent effect whatsoever, and Bosnia in the 1994-95 period.  UN-supervised retaliation, all virtuously delayed and “proportional,” landed the Western coalition and Bosnians in Sarajevo in September 1995, with civilians being bombed to smithereens by the Serbs, and our NATO allies on the ground in defensive roles, surrounded under fire and screaming for close air support that never came.

Even if we manage to put a temporary kibosh on the recent pattern of Houthi maritime attacks, the problem with what we’re doing is that it won’t box up Iran and encourage a wiser frame of mind in the mullahs in Tehran.  There are numerous ways to disrupt the status quo in the Middle East, and Iran and its proxies will find all of them.

The key to this problem is what I refer to in the first excerpt below.  Lagging retaliations like the Houthi strikes are of very limited use (practically none, in my view).  What the U.S. should be doing is what only we can do:  changing Iran’s operational reality around the Middle East.

It’s very bad that Iran has been attacking U.S. troops through its militia proxies.  But what is the whole situation about, with the U.S. troops there and Iran scooting around trying to sabotage us?

It’s about Iran’s “land-bridge” to the Mediterranean, through, precisely, Iraq and Syria.  The Iranian regime has been working to establish it for the last two decades.  (Some earlier treatments of the history are here, here, here, here, and here.)  It’s a major element of the geostrategic move to surround and flank Israel and develop an “internal line of communication” from Iran to the Mediterranean coast.

The circuit briefly closed on the land-bridge in late 2017, but the few U.S. troops Trump left in Syria helped, while he was in office, to discourage Iran from expanding use of it.  One of the most significant deterrent events in the Trump years was a demonstration in February 2018 involving the Russian mercenary Wagner Group, which participated in an attack on Americans in Syria and was obliterated a few hours later.  Iran’s proxy-militia activities in Syria quieted after that.

The trend of U.S. policy was a major deterrent as well.  Nothing signaled the U.S. intent to oppose Iran’s plans in the Levant as clearly as the embassy move to Jerusalem, recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights, and negotiation of the Abraham Accords.  Trump didn’t lay out his strategy systematically in policy speeches, as other post-World War II presidents have done, but there was nothing complex or mysterious about it.  Support Israel, cultivate friendly, forward-looking Arab leaders as partners, deter Iran.

Iran’s blatantly evident involvement in the current round of disruptive activities in the region, and in particular the targeting of Americans, is all the justification we need to take a big-picture look and shift the correlation of forces in our favor.  As outlined in the first excerpt below, the two main near-term tasks are choking off Iran’s land-bridge – a great boon to the entire region – and choking off the flow of arms from Iran to the Houthis.

An enterprising statesman would, moreover, diplomatically change the dynamic in Yemen from Complete Falling-Apart Mess to regionally-engaged project for a domestic settlement there, one that shouldered out Iran and gave the Houthis a choice of joining a pacified end-state or being rolled.

A useful start in the situation as of today would be bombing the snot out of Iraqi militia resources, beefing U.S. forces and rules of engagement up for instant, devastating counterbattery if they’re fired on, and giving Iran one last warning before taking out the smuggling fleet used to move arms to the Houthis.  It’s the same one Iran has been using for a variety of money-grubbing operations for 30 years; we know where it is and what it looks like.

With the Iraqi militias, a better-arranged understanding with the government of Iraq is needed.  This doesn’t mean an increase in U.S. boots on the ground, but it would require a much-needed update of our diplomatic profile in Iraq, and a revision of expectations.  We have plenty of great-power assets to incentivize the Iraqis with, on the understanding that the process would start with our influence in Baghdad being in tension with Tehran’s.  That’s what competent diplomacy is for.

F/A-18 Super Hornets from Carrier Air Wing 3 (CVW-3) launch from USS Dwight D Eisenhower (CVN-69) on 11 Jan 2024 for air strikes on Houthi insurgent targets in Yemen. USN video via US CENTCOM, social media.

Changing Iran’s reality preemptively is the key to deterrence, and bombing Houthis in carefully circumscribed ways after they attack foreign shipping won’t get that done.  That pattern just leaves Iran in the driver’s seat, with the U.S always in reaction mode.  The time is at hand to seize the initiative and bomb for our purposes – i.e., preventing Iran from transforming conditions against everyone else in the Middle East – rather than merely signaling dissatisfaction with the Houthis.

Here are the excerpts:

I’m perceiving an unfortunate tension between strikes intended to have a useful effect, which reflect the hand of CENTCOM commander GEN Kurilla (very good in his role), and punch-pulling by the higher-ups (NSC, Oval Office) seeking to skirt or minimize collision with Iran and virtue-signal over how careful we’re being to avoid collateral damage.

Reporting on Friday evening indicated there was a second round of strikes right after the first one; i.e., also on Thursday night.  It was reportedly 30 minutes to an hour after the first strike package.  That would be the concept of Kurilla and the warfighters executing in theater.  The follow-up needs to be rapid while the Houthis are scrambling and off balance, not expecting the fresh hit.  The initial warning to the Houthis – basically, a roof-knock rolled out in slo-mo through the New York Times – was very ill considered by Team Biden, but the quick follow-up was good tactics.

We’ll see how this turns out.  Kyle Orton is right that punches are being pulled.  That doesn’t mean it’s a total loss.  If the initial two-package hit on some 28 sites (with 60+ targets) doesn’t set the Houthis back enough to deter their maritime attack profile, additional hits can be mounted.

The genuinely unfortunate thing is that what the Houthis (and others) have already done is plenty of pretext for hitting them much harder, and going after other Iranian assets.  Yet we’re not doing that.

What we really need to do is not keep dog-paddling behind, but take out the capabilities for an even larger disruption attempt by Iran, the Houthis, and the Iraqi militias that have been attacking US forces.  Entirely sufficient pretext is there to execute a reprisal – in which we seize the initiative and choose a target list for OUR priorities – rather than mere retaliation against the intent already demonstrated.  Our big project should be cutting off Iran’s land-bridge to Hezbollah and the West Bank, and blasting the logistic pipeline from Iran to Yemen into oblivion.

The first strikes are looking too incremental, not really enough for the limited purpose they served.  That’s worrisome.  We’ll see.

Second excerpt (following the arguments in the case brought against Israel in the International Court of Justice at The Hague):

The ICJ procedure isn’t about a legal process; it’s a venue in which to “establish” the basis for a political narrative.  A narrative that’s essentially anti-Israel and pro-Iran.

I’d like to think [Reps Ro] Khanna, [Pramila] Jayapal, et al were just “improperly advised,” as we say of seniors in the military.  (They’re never wrong.  Note: joke alert.)  We out here probably hear from Ro Khanna a lot more than others do, because he represents a district in California.  He’s actually much smarter than he came off in his lateral move against the strikes.  I really doubt he doesn’t understand the authority principles at work for POTUS.  But the “no authority! Should have asked Congress!” theme is another talking point for the “excessive force, disproportionate reaction” narrative.

Scare-quoted non-realities taken as conditions, in the decision-making process for defense and security issues, is a serious problem getting worse.  (There’s not space on the web to explain how that applies to Ukraine.)  [A colleague] spoke of a myth exploding, with the disgraceful spectacle in the ICJ this week [i.e., the South African “brief” alleging the war against Hamas to be “genocide”], and yes, myths are exploding all around us.  We’ve never seen such a minefield of exploding myths, and my perception is that it’s having an instructive effect for a lot of people who only see things when they finally explode.

Now is a time to get busy rewriting the narrative for the dead-myth future.  It’s a remarkable privilege for a remarkable time.  The narrative has to be written before the need for its implementation becomes obvious.  But the emerging conditions will never be riper for that need to be perceived.  What’s written today will resonate tomorrow.  (It helps to keep in mind that the American War of Independence was never actively supported by more than about 40% of the colonial population – yet that core was enough to win.)

A number of topical rewrites are needed.  The key isn’t having a majority that suddenly understands and cares about everything.  It’s the 40% not giving up.

Final note:  I’m seeing a level of misunderstanding on social media regarding who’s in charge of the strikes by the U.S. forces, and the impact of Secretary of Defense Austin’s hospitalization.  Rather than answer the speculation of others, I will simply lay out what is much more probably the case.

The punch-pulling and ineffectiveness of the coalition strikes so far is not due to a lack of input from President Biden or SECDEF Austin.  Rather, it’s due to control of the strikes by the same Biden administration team whose preferences and philosophy in such matters are in full accord with those of Biden and Austin – though stating the proposition conversely is probably more realistic.  I.e., Biden and Austin are in accord with the staff (and background handlers for the Oval Office) who are actually making the decisions.

Pulling punches, as the U.S. did by warning the Houthis via the New York Times on Thursday at least two hours before the first strike, is neither incompetence nor something the DOD planners would do on their own.  It was done deliberately by the Biden administration.

Though the prior warning makes a nice virtue signal, its main function was to assure Iran that the strike wouldn’t be used to inflict maximum devastation.  The warning allowed the Houthis to move weapons and personnel away from their high-value locations before U.S. and  warplanes arrived.

The initial strike packages had a semblance of being robust, and as noted in the first excerpt above, I perceive that General Kurilla and his theater staffs were allowed to assemble the target list.  However, the target selection was, as I also pointed out above, reactive.  It lagged the threat, retaliating only against the attacks already committed, instead of going after targets that would deter Iran and the Houthis from escalating further.

It’s not the Pentagon’s choice what the objective is.  POTUS is the ultimate authority on that.  If left to their own devices, the Pentagon and theater commands like CENTCOM have plenty of operational planners and targeting experts who would competently target for proactive deterrence rather than reactive retaliation – if they were allowed to.

They weren’t.  It will help readers, to get it out of their heads that any deterrence failure of the strikes was due to the “MIA” status of POTUS and SECDEF. That’s not the salient factor.

The administration as a whole isn’t trying to have the deterrent effect we actually need.  Not so far, at any rate.

Again, as discussed above, dithering around avoiding proactive deterrence is the McNamara model from the 1960s, and has been characteristic of Democratic administrations over the last 50-60 years.  The American people are wrong to assume force is being used to achieve the objectives the people have in mind.  In many cases, it’s being used for demonstration’s sake, and the target audience isn’t so much the opponent as the American people.  You’re supposed to feel reassured just because force is being used.

There may be a hope that the opponent will alter his behavior from fear of a credible proactive-deterrence campaign that never comes.  If, as I suspect, there’s not going to be a truly determined proactive-deterrence campaign, that hope will be dashed once again.  So far, the ineffectiveness is right on schedule.

Military force doesn’t just “work” like a one-trick magic wand to achieve objectives.  Everything depends on how it’s used.  It’s never the military with the primary motive to use it ineffectively.  That’s the choice of politics.

Feature image:  E-2C Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft hogs the spotlight for once, preparing to launch from USS Dwight D Eisenhower (CVN-69) on 11 January 2024 to support air strikes on Houthi insurgent targets in Yemen.  The E-2C is with the VAW-123 Screwtops of Carrier Air Wing 3 (CVW-3) embarked in USS Eisenhower.  U.S. Navy video via US CENTCOM, social media.