Houthis and the Blowhard

Why helping organizations whose slogan is "Death to America" is not good policy

When the news talks about Houthis (pronounced hooties, which reminds me of the old band Hootie and the Blowfish), they are talking about Ansar Allah, a loose confederation of Middle Eastern militants whose slogan is “Death to America, Death to Israel.” The Houthis sort of run Yemen. That is to say, they collect their taxes and print their money, but the Houthis are such a loose organization, it’s hard to say how many of them there are. Their policies are even looser. They alternately support Yemen, run Yemen, oppose Yemen, and go to war with Yemen. Depends on which day it is.

They are unique in other ways. While most of the Muslim world is Sunni (maybe 90%, including Saudi Arabia) and the minority are Shia (maybe 10%, including Iran), the Houthis are Zaydi, a sect known only in Yemen. Except most of Yemen is Sunni. So they practice a type of Muslim faith that is not even the majority in the one country they control and in the one country that Zaydi exists. Zaydi is closer to Shia (Iran) than Sunni (Saudi Arabia) and the politics of the Houthis follow this same pattern.

The Houthis started out as mainly a religious movement that morphed into a political movement and now boasts a pirate navy. Their slogan is a long one: God is great, death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam. But in normal chants this is reduced to one or both of the “death to” phrases.

The Houthis have a confused platform. They advocate for women’s right to vote and hold public office, but not to be out in public without a male chaperone. They claim to support the Yemeni people, but they draft boys and girls into the armed forces and have been accused by international organizations of using child soldiers. Girls are more often used as spies, informants, or guards. They claim to advocate for humanitarian help for Yemen, but the Houthis have been accused of diverting and stealing this aid sent to them from the United Nations, sometimes selling the food rather than giving it to Yemeni citizens in need.

The Houthis have often been accused of using human shields and attacking civilian areas. They also sometimes fight to give small, distant, and marginalized tribes in Yemen a greater say in politics.

While Trump was still President, he designated the Houthis a terrorist organization. This seemingly symbolic gesture actually has a lot of teeth. It made it difficult for the Houthis to do international business and banking; it put all of the Houthis on a watch list so they could not enter the United States. Furthermore, it made it a crime for any U.S. citizen to provide aid, material resources, or support to the Houthis. This decision, like anything done by Trump, met swift opposition by Democrats, who said that making the Houthis terrorists would limit humanitarian aid to Yemen and was therefore inhumane, evil, racist, xenophobic, and whatever else they could think of. Yemen was having a slew of disasters: a famine, a cholera epidemic, and intermittent warfare. But the humanitarian aid that was already going to Yemen, was being stolen by the Houthis. Giving them more humanitarian aid was only feeding the Houthi beast.

Almost as soon as Joseph Biden took office in January 2021, he undid what Trump had done about the Houthis. First, Biden said he was no longer going to support Saudi Arabia’s efforts to fight the Houthis, he was going to freeze the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia, and he was going to take away the “terrorist” label from the Houthis whose slogan, may I remind you, is “death to America.” Biden made news at the time with these gallant and blowhard statements, but at the time, Houthis were not the force they have become.

On January 17, 2024, Biden undid his own ruling, restoring Trump’s ruling. After a three-year period where Houthis could run free, Biden made the Houthis terrorists again. But in the three years or so that Biden let the Houthis off the leash, they gained power. Oh, and in this same three-year reprieve he gave the Houthis, he also funneled $6B to Iran. Iran likes to act like it never heard of the Houthis, but Iran is considered the Houthi’s main backer.

Now the Houthis are attacking ships on the Red Sea. Some have suggested these pirate actions may involve an alliance of Houthis with Iran. And these Houthi pirates aren’t shooting slingshots, they have ballistic weapons. They have drones. And the Red Sea is a major commercial corridor for international shipping; 15% of the commercial goods that travel by sea go through the Red Sea.

This stronger and belligerent Houthi presence was first felt on November 19, 2023 (while Biden still said the Houthis were not terrorists) when they hijacked a commercial ship. Since then, they have hijacked dozens of others. The Houthis claim to be targeting Israeli ships, but their recent list of conquests belie this. Now the U.S. has escalated to carrying out air strikes against the Houthi pirates, but the Houthis were growing bolder and stronger.

On January 11, 2024, Navy Seals intercepted a ship off the coast of Somalia that was headed to deliver weapons to the Houthis. The weapons came from Iran, the country that is not sure it knows who the Houthis are. Navy Seals tried to stop this, but these two brave men went missing and are presumed dead. Their bodies have yet to be recovered. Heard that on the news? You are more likely to hear the Epstein client list on CNN than a report that two of our elite fighting forces lost their lives to fix this perfectly avoidable catastrophe.

Biden has now said he thinks that Iran is emboldening the Houthis, and I suspect most international experts agree. But Biden’s solution is to call up Teheran and tell them to stop. Iran, of course, says they don’t know what Joe is talking about.

However, there remains a lot we don’t know. We believe that evidence is compelling that Iran does back the Houthis, but we don’t know if Iran has any kind of actual control over them. Are they just sending them weapons because the enemy of my enemy is my friend? Or are they allies? Or are they running the Houthis to launch a proxy war with America? And why are Houthis messing with Red Sea commercial shipping? We don’t know exactly. They say it is part of their war with Israel, but shutting down international commerce is a global issue. And it’s going to impact the price of goods.

Most cargo ships who normally would use the Red Sea are re-routing, making shipping costs higher by taking longer routes. About 40% of the clothes and half of the shoes purchased in Europe come through the Red Sea; about 20% of US garments also come through the Red Sea. Look for much higher prices this spring, particularly for consumer goods like computers, garments, housewares, and drugs. As we have all learned in these days of Amazon, shipping costs are always passed on to the consumer, whether as a direct line item or built into the merchandise price. Some have speculated certain goods could increase in price by as much as 20%. It is also going to mess with supply chains, too. Drugs, technological components, and building materials are taking longer to be delivered—about four or more weeks longer. Some goods that used to travel entirely by ship are now going by ship directly to the port of Los Angeles, so they can be offloaded and reloaded and go by train or truck to the interior or East Coast.

Gee, too bad we have stopped drilling for oil and have drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. To paraphrase the Lloyd Bridges character in the movie Airport!, we picked a bad day to give up fossil fuels.

This leaves us to sing the chorus to the “Biden is President” song which goes like this: what are we going to do now? This is another example of Biden making a war out of a minor problem. Had he left the terrorist designation from Trump in place, it is not likely the Houthis could have gained enough momentum to become the disruptive fighting force they are now. Biden’s ham-fisted “diplomacy” in Saudi Arabia upset the balance of power in the Middle East—Saudi Arabia was fighting the Houthis already, but Biden made sure to spit in their eye. And Biden has been shoveling money to Iran as fast as he could—remember how Biden sent Iran $6B in September of 2023? Not a smart move.

To recap, here is what Biden did:

• He improved the situation for the Houthis by stripping them of their terrorist designation

• He sent Iran money that he did not have to send them

• He antagonized our allies who were fighting the Houthis on their home turf

On January 19, 2024, U.S. troops have again shed blood on foreign soil with three dead heroes and dozens of wounded in a drone attack in Jordan. Iran is being blamed, but intelligence has reported the attack may not be by Iran but rather by some unnamed “radical militant groups” that were supported by Iran. Iran is claiming, like Sergeant Schulz on the old Hogan’s Heroes show, that it knows nothing.

Gee, and I wonder what “radical militant group” hates America and gets support from Iran might be active in a drone strike in Jordan? What terrorist groups are over there? Which ones are known for drone attacks? That’s a head scratcher for the Biden administration, but not for me. This latest drone strike has Houthi written all over it.

Here is a good diplomatic strategy for Joe Biden to consider in the future, if he even has a future. If an organization has an official slogan of “Death to America,” believe them. Treat them as terrorists. And don’t give billions to nations that support organizations whose slogan is “Death to America.” And don’t gratuitously insult those who fight organizations that have the slogan “Death to America.”