The tagline of the seminal reality-tv show, MTV’s The Real World, was: Find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. It was a lesson the Iran-backed Houthis learned over the weekend after killing an Israeli civilian in Tel Aviv with a drone and receiving a clear message in the form of an Israeli air force strike in response. In the past few months, the Houthis have only earned retaliation from the U.S.
And that American retaliation has been nothing if not polite.
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Erik Kurilla, has been unusually assertive of late in warning the administration and in particular Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin that Americans were going to get killed if the administration refused to do more than fire mostly symbolic strikes at the Houthis.
“Kurilla called in his letter to Austin for a stepped-up ‘whole of government’ effort against the Houthis, employing economic, diplomatic and potentially stronger military pressure to discourage attacks on ships in the Red Sea and a narrow strait known as Bab el-Mandeb, off Yemen’s coast,” reported the Journal.
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