Israel has shown excessive restraint against the Houthis. It’s time to finish them off for good.
It was said that Josef Stalin was not impressed with the American nuclear program until he was shown pictures of the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima. Though he had nearly two dozen spies, including one top scientist at Los Alamos, reporting on the Manhattan Project, he was not that impressed by the creation of a simply bigger bomb. Famously, Stalin showed little emotion when Harry Truman shared in general terms the success of the Trinity test in the New Mexico desert. When Stalin finally saw what one bomb could do, he pushed the Soviet nuclear program hard, to the point that its first detonation was well before US estimates.
Since the last bomb was dropped on Nagasaki 80 years ago, no country has used a nuclear device in warfare. Why? The obvious answer is that these weapons are horrific. The relatively crude devices dropped on Japan caused enormous destruction, loss of life, and suffering of the numerous Japanese who experienced radiation burns. Since the war ended shortly after the nuclear attacks, the US was able to get personnel into the affected cities relatively soon after the explosions. They recorded the physical destruction, means of death and health issues for the living who were very badly burned, deformed, or ill from radiation poisoning. The weapons we have today are orders of magnitude more powerful than their predecessors and would wipe out cities in a single attack. The US just recently fired 4 improved Extended Life (EL) Trident D5 submarine-launched missiles just to keep the stockpile fresh.
Besides the horrors of nuclear weapons, there is another reason why they were never deployed in Korea, Vietnam, or the various Middle East wars: retaliation. Using these bombs, the US ran the real risk that Russia and later China might return the favor on the US or one of its allies. While Truman made oblique remarks of bringing hydrogen bombs into the Korean theater, there was no real consideration of their use there or in Vietnam. The US lost a lot of bombers in its conventional wars with the communist enemies. Should nuclear weapons be off-limits forever? Should the US and Israel only hold them for a second-strike: absorb the destruction of your country and then let the subs take care of business when your country is a smoldering heap of rubble?
The general rule with nuclear countries is that they are rational, namely that they realize that their use of nuclear weapons of any kind may escalate into mutually-assured destruction. But what happens when lunatics have the bomb? I don’t believe that Iran would sit on a functioning nuclear weapon on a missile more than a day before firing it off at Israel. Is there any condition in which the good guys, as we see ourselves, would use one or more nuclear weapons first? Are they only there to scare our enemies or use when the subs don’t get their messages because no one is still alive to contact them? Nuclear weapons may cause massive destruction and horrific death and injury, but conventional weapons also can produce hideous outcomes. Hamas used thermobaric bombs on private homes and anti-tank munitions on private cars. Some people were too far burned to be identified; in a few cases only a few teeth remained from what had been a human being. The IDF returns soldiers killed in war in sealed coffins exactly as they fell. The families cannot open the boxes.
The Houthis in Yemen are cockroaches that never go away. Israel has attacked them many times and destroyed much of their port, energy, and weapons infrastructure. Another “powerful” attack was made on Thursday, with huge plumes of smoke billowing over the dump that Sa’ana has become. Yet, the khat-fueld lunatics keep attacking. Just as Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, was ending on Wednesday, a Houthi drone hit a mall in the southern port city of Eilat. At the time of this writing, 50 are reported wounded, with several in critical condition. Two Iron Dome missiles were fired at the projectile, but with no success. No anti-missiles system has proven itself to be 100% successful. A fair number of Iranian missiles hit sites in Israel during the summer war, though not much was discussed on this matter at the time due to national security considerations. In typical Israeli fashion, my wife and I were sitting in a cab, while the driver spoke by speaker phone to his son. The latter said that he was assigned to guard a group of workers fixing a very sensitive building in Tel Aviv that had been hit by an Iranian missile. What the press won’t tell you, your local cabbie can.
The issue of nuclear weapons use over Yemen should be seriously considered. There will be the knee-jerk response that one is not allowed to use nuclear weapons, ever, never, no way, forget it. But Yemen has no big nuclear sugar daddy. Most of the country is held by pro-Saudi forces, while Sa’ana and its surroundings are held by Iran’s darlings, the Houthis. If Israel bombs the Houthis, the Russians, Chinese, Pakistanis, and other holders of nuclear weapons, will not offer to come to their aid. As conventional air and naval bombing have not put the Houthis out of business and there is no way to mount a serious ground campaign, then it is time to make the terrorists disappear. Give ample warning to civilians and then turn the Houthi areas of Yemen into glass. This is a war of civilizations: Islam versus Judaism and Christianity. The Houthis look like 7th Century leftovers but they will die in their fight to conquer the world in the name of Islam. As they are already 14 centuries back, one bomb should take care of the remaining 7 centuries. If one is really squeamish, then do an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) in the atmosphere and fry all of their electronics. It would hopefully shut down their ability to fire projectiles at Israel and would be a warning to Iran: you’re next.
Until the Korean War, every country used every weapon at its disposal in order to win war. After the bombing of Japan, such was no longer the case. The nuclear and thermonuclear weapons de facto became off-limits. You can use napalm, cluster bombs, flamethrowers, fragment grenades, massive conventional bombs such as the “Daisy Cutter” used in Vietnam, but you can’t use a nuclear weapon, even if its yield is dialed down, as can be done today. If I was the prime minister of Israel and I convened my security chiefs, I would ask them how do we put the Houthi problem to bed? We quieted Hezbollah, have mostly tamed Hamas, turned Assad into a Russian, and gave Iran a solid bloody nose. But we can’t stop the Houthis from firing a missile or drone once a week? The ports have been bombed, as have their weapons stores. Their leaders have been wiped out, but the projectiles keep coming. The time has come to finish the Houthi threat to Israel and international shipping. You may choose to show restraint with the bomb; your enemy will not.
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