A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW: Come On, All You Big Strong Men…

Well, come on all of you big strong men
Uncle Sam needs your help again
He’s got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We’re going to have a whole lot of fun…

— ‘I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixing’-To-Die-Rag’ by Country Joe and the Fish, 1967

The well-known philosopher Yogi Berra once exclaimed, ‘It’s deja vu… all over again!”

Unfortunately, unlike Yogi, Joe Biden’s rendition of deja vu isn’t funny. It’s going to get people killed!

According to the Washington Post, Biden’s administration has announced we (meaning the sons and daughters of American families other than his own), are going to war against the Houthis (a faction in the civil war in Yemen) because they are attacking American ships in the Red Sea. Administration officials admit they have “no idea how long it will take to degrade the capabilities of the terror group sufficiently.”

Let’s see, a Democrat American President is taking us to war — with no idea how long it will last — because a group involved in a civil war in another country are shooting at American navy ships off of their coast. Hmmmm …. I believe this is a remake of a movie from the 1960s.

It was called the Vietnam war. I had a minor role in it.

In August 1964, a US navy ship (the destroyer USS Maddox) was minding its own business in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam . During the night, armed vessels from North Vietnam fired at the Maddox without provocation.

At least that was President Lyndon Johnson’s version of the story. He went on TV and told the nation, “Repeated acts of violence against the armed forces of the United States must be met not only with alert defense, but with positive reply. The reply is being given as I speak to you tonight.”

The Maddox was, in fact, specially equipped with electronic surveillance to enable it to gather “signal intelligence” (SIGINT) from North Vietnam.  What else it may have been doing is still a matter of debate.

Nor is it clear the Maddox was actually attacked. A Navy pilot who flew over the Maddox during the alleged attack doubted it — as did the commander of the Maddox. A year later that Navy pilot, Medal of Honor recipient James Stockdale, would be shot down and spend 7 years as a POW in the infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’.

The “reply” Johnson told the American people was “being given” as he spoke was an air attack against an oil storage facility in North Vietnam, lead (reluctantly) by Stockdale from the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga. Stockdale later said of that raid, “We were about to launch a war under false pretenses, in the face of the on-scene military commander’s advice to the contrary.”

But Johnson didn’t stop with that one raid. Four days later he went before Congress to ask for authority to use whatever means necessary “to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia”. Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution with only two dissenting votes.

That Resolution gave Johnson a free hand to take us into a war that resulted in the deaths of over 50,000 Americans whose names are on a Wall in Washington, DC. And only god knows how many Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians by the time it “ended” in 1975.

Now here are we in 2024, with a Democrat president wanting to escalate a conflict because American navy ships are being attacked by the Houthis in the Red Sea – with no clue how long it might last.

I’m sure those who think this is a good idea will assure us this time it’s “different” — that they’ve learned from the mistakes of Vietnam, all evidence to the contrary. This is the same gang who have us in a proxy war in Ukraine with no end in sight.

For those who weren’t around during Vietnam, I’m going to speculate how “degrad[ing] the capabilities” of the Houthis may proceed. Initially it will be all about “air power” — we’ll win with our overpowering technological advantage. No American ground troops will be at risk.

History has not shown that any enemy can be defeated with just air power. It didn’t work in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan — or anywhere else it’s been tried. The Russians haven’t been able to do it in Ukraine. Sooner or later, ya gotta put boots on the ground — and that’s when things can go off the rails.

“When have any of our plans ever actually worked? We plan, we get there, all hell breaks loose.”

That’s a quote from a Harry Potter movie. Fictional adolescents have figured it out.

But it conveys the same idea as this one from German Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke who said “No plan survives first contact with the enemy!” Case in point: The D-Day invasion of Normandy was the most extensively planned military operation in history — and it went to hell in the first 5 minutes.

So what’s the plan for degrading the capabilities of the Houthis? We gonna shoot missiles at, and drop bombs on, anywhere in Yemen we think they’re hidin’?

In WWII we bombarded Iwo Jima for 72 days prior to its invasion — and it still took 70,000 marines 36 days to “degrade the capability” of the Japanese there, with over 7,000 Americans killed.  Iwo Jima was less than 12 square miles, and the Japanese defenders were cut off from resupply.

The Houthis are in Yemen, which is over 200,000 square miles that can be re-supplied (by its patron Iran) either directly by sea, or by land across Oman. Are we going to blockade from the sea, and bomb supply routes in Oman? Bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos during the Vietnam war didn’t work worth a damn.

So … I ask again … what’s the plan? The answer — there ain’t one that doesn’t ultimately involve occupying Yemen. How’d that work out in South Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan?

We’re crying havoc, and letting loose the dogs of war, because our navy vessels are being attacked in waters off of the foreign shore of a little country involved in a civil war. It’s the Gulf of Tonkin all over again.

Yogi was not only a philosopher — he was prescient.

In response to the escalation of the war in Vietnam under the dubious authority of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Congress enacted the War Powers Act in 1974. That Act provides “hostilities commenced pursuant to this Act shall not be sustained beyond thirty days from the date of their initiation except as provided in specific legislation enacted for that purpose by the Congress.”

Short of an actual Declaration of War by Congress, pursuant to Article 1, Section 8, of the US Constitution, the President can’t take us to war for more than 30 days. The President doesn’t have the unilateral legal authority to commit United States military forces to war against the Houthis to “degrade their capabilities” for however long it takes.

But, Biden supporters will say, this isn’t a “war” so it doesn’t require congressional action. Really? How is it any different than what President Thomas Jefferson did against the Barbary pirates in 1804 — with the express authorization of Congress?

(Literally minutes before I was about to send this to the Daily Post for publication, I heard a Defense Department talking head on TV explaining why what we’re doing to the Houthis “isn’t a war”.  No reporter asked what you call two belligerents shooting at each other… if not war?)

Patriotism being “the last bastion of a scoundrel”, get ready for the propaganda from the Biden administration (and its lackeys in the media) about it being our patriotic duty to kick some Houthi ass for attacking our ships.

We already have two dead Navy seals who were on an op to seize Houthi weapons — so American blood has been shed.  Time for some pay-back!

I’m as patriotic as anyone — but getting into an ill-defined war with no viable plan is bullshit.  No one will gain anything from it – except Joe Bidens’ donors on Wall Street,

Now come on Wall Street, don’t be slow
Why man, this war-a-go-go
There’s plenty of good money to be made
Supplying the military with tools of the trade….

All you college students who want Joe Biden to pay off your student loans need to step up and help old Joe out with his war against the Houthis.  It’s time to “put down your books and pick up a gun”, ’cause:

…You know that peace can only be won
When we’ve blown ’em all to kingdom come.