Saudi Arabia's Vietnam

I don't recall the Saudis going out looking for wars to get involved in. They really should have taken a look at our history and that of the Russans in Afghanistan. As we frquently seemed to do in Afghanistan, the Saudis managed to bomb a wedding recently.

The death toll from Saudi-led airstrikes that hit a wedding party in Yemen has risen to 131, making it the deadliest single incident since the start of the country's civil war, medical officials said Tuesday.

The U.N. says at least 2,355 civilians have been killed in fighting since March, when the coalition began launching airstrikes against Shiite Houthi rebels and allied army units, who control the capital and are at war with the internationally recognized government as well as southern separatists, local militias and Sunni extremists.

Bombing didn't work in Vietnam despite our best efforts. Yeah, I know. It's yahoo answers. We dropped a shitload on them, though, and we still had to get 58,000 of our countrymen killed. I believe that once the countrie that make up the coalition realize they are going to have to sacrifice lives they will end this effort. Then again, one would have expected Vietnam and some of the other mistakes to have ended sooner. It doesn't help that the guy they're fighting for is holed up in Saudi Arabia waiting to be put back in power. Not too inspirational. 

Here is the Saudi misinformation on the strike. 

Brig. Gen. Ahmed Asiri tells The Associated Press Wednesday that "we did not conduct any operations in that area two days ago," referring to Monday's incident, in which more than 130 people were killed in the deadliest single event of Yemen's civil war.

Asiri says there is no evidence of what caused the deaths, and that ordinary civilians cannot distinguish between airstrikes, missiles, cannon fire or local explosions.

It could have been asteroids, UFOs, act of God. Who knows?

The Saudis Look to Have a Vietnam

The Saudis and the members of their coalition in Yemen aren't so experienced the whole intervention in other countries thing. They're likely to get experienced fast.

Saudi Arabia’s newfound military prowess and interventionist policy is being put to the test in the battle for central Yemen, with rising casualties posing a challenge to public support for the war.

For Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Arab Gulf allies, the military campaign in Yemen’s central province of Marib is their largest in more than 80 years and for some members of the coalition, their first real taste of war.

The fact that former President Hadi of Yemen is a guest of the Saudis and is kicking back waiting to be re-installed in his former job suggests to me this ain't gonna go well. 

And casualties have risen. Shortly before the ground invasion, a Houthi rocket attack on a military base outside Marib on Sept. 4 killed 60 Gulf troops, including 45 Emirati soldiers, according to official news agencies in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

“I think the biggest question is the sustainability of casualties – UAE, Kuwait and Qatar – these societies really haven’t suffered casualties in foreign wars in the living memory of anyone,” Mr. Gause said.

Hearts and minds still matter.

“The public debate in the Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain is very simple: action in Yemen is not only to save Yemen from the hand of Houthi militia control, it is rather an important part of an overdue regional, Arab confrontation with Iran,” says Mustafa Alani, director of national security at the Jeddah-based Gulf Research Center

“Winning in Yemen is a key battlefield in the wide war against Iran aggressive policy,” he says. “Coalition forces understand the cost of this confrontation, and the possibility of high causalities in certain areas.”

Yes, well if they truly want to take on Iran, they better get used to casualties. The Iranians already know about suffering them. 

The death toll, overall, was an estimated 1 million for Iran and 250,000-500,000 for Iraq.

I suspect none of these coalition countries are prepared to sacrifice numbers like that. 

The Yemen Strategy?

This post will be my latest attempt to figure out what the hell is happening there, courtesy of the fine reporters at Christian Science Monitor. Right now things don't seem so bad in exile for Mr. Hadi.

From the gilded suites and granite lobby of a luxurious five-star hotel here, the remnants of Yemen’s embattled government sees a daily lineup of Yemeni tribal leaders, Western diplomats, and Saudi military commanders.

Over countless cups of bittersweet coffee and dates, and lobster and seafood dinners, Yemeni ministers calmly toss out phrases like “national dialogue” and “institution building” as they talk up their postwar political plans.

I'm thinking "postwar political plans" might be jumping the gun a bit. The hopes for Hadi seem to rest on putting together a coalition of tribal fighters from Central and Southern Yemen to rise up against the Houthi. There is also the offer of amnesty to those loyal to Saleh who will defect and join the effort to defeat the Houthi. That seems to be less strategy than wishful thinking.

The Houthi-Saleh fighters boast superior firepower due to the fact that Saleh’s supporters include entire military units with fierce allegiances to their political and financial backer. Some of this equipment is a legacy of US military aid to Yemen during Saleh’s rule, which continued under Hadi’s government.

The Houthis control vital military installations outside Sanaa and warehouses of RPGs, tanks, and armor-piercing grenade and rocket launchers.

Given this superior firepower, the Hadi government’s strategy is to overcome the militias with greater manpower and urge tribal and political factions to rise up town by town, village by village against what many Yemenis view as Houthi “invaders”.

Meanwhile, the Saudis, Egyptians, US, Western powers and pretty much everyone else are sending nothing but their best wishes for a good outcome.

However, weary of being dragged into a protracted fight, Riyadh and Cairo have stopped short of committing ground troops to a wider war across Yemen.

The Hadi government has also received little commitment from the US and its Western allies; officials say they left recent talks sessions with Western diplomats “frustrated” and “dismayed.”

In a rewrite of the Aiken Rule, I believe we should probably back the winner (or stay out of it altogether) and declare victory. 

Exiled officials concur that by arming and militarizing Sunni tribes across the country, they may create a “second Libya” where tribal militias roam unchallenged and refuse to answer to a weak central government.

“We do not want to place heavy arms into the hands of tribes and have them act outside the army,” says Transport Minister Badr Mubarak Ba-Salma, who has led talks with tribal representatives.

Yes, we seriously do not want that. 

Yemen Bookmark

I'm just linking to this. I can't figure out who we're for or against in Yemen. It varies by the hour.

In June 2006 Gen. John Abizaid, who headed the US Central Command, sat down for a series of meetings with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his interior minister. What happened in that meeting – Saleh urging the US to help him assassinate a political rival – is useful background to assessing US support today for a Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen.  

Yeah, Saleh is on the side of the Houthis now.

May as well throw this bookmark on, too.

I have read that another reason for the Iraq War was to send a message to other Middle Eastern countries that America has the military might to overthrow their countries and reshape the region.

The opposite occurred. [The Bush administration] demonstrated we were incompetent.