I can only surmise that Silicon Valley has a sizeable contingent raised by hippie Vietnam protestors that produced a generational vibe of "military bad".
The military is a gun. It shoots what the President wants dead. In that case, it was Cambodia.
You really don’t want a USA where the military decides it doesn’t want to listen to civilian government anymore.
Also wish Congress wasn't a clown car perpetually headed off a cliff.
But the Department of War became the Department of Defense, so I guess all these gun shots aren't war anymore.
And as for the gun analogy, I'm reminded of the "production for use"[0] defense from Howard Hawks's His Girl Friday:
"And so, into this little tortured mind came the idea that that gun had been produced for use. And use it he did."
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I hear you on the need for a declaration of war, but as I'm sure you realize, it's not practical for most of the modern conflicts we find ourselves in. Congress has also explicitly given the Executive the power to conduct limited engagements because conflict develops much more quickly in many cases than Congress can act and we need to be able to respond quickly.
Now of course one might argue something such as that we shouldn't be in areas or be doing things that could instantly cause a conflict and of course that sounds great to me, but then after a second glance you realize that, well, for example Americans must get oil and gas from the Middle East and so here we are without a formal declaration of war protecting shipping lanes.
TBF if the US military don't have modern rifles/equipments they will certainly not invade Iraq. So yes, having significantly better weapons does increase the chance of war because it increase your chance of winning (thus make it more politically feasible for politicians to push for it).
Is that argument wrong? Over the past few decades US military adventurism has been, on the whole, harmful to both the US and the rest of the world. Having "expanded military capabilities" seems to have done the US more harm than good, even ignoring the opportunity costs of spending on those military capabilities rather than more productive things.
Go live as a civilian in a country that our military has decimated with bombs and then say again that "military bad" is just a vibe.
As for their aims, you can believe it’s about Palestine but that seems more pretextual. Historically the Houthi’s have been extremely anti Saudia Arabia and the normalization talks with Israel pose a substantial threat to them and Iranians (not to mention the US historically is allied with Saudia Arabia). It’s possible that this is just retaliation for all of that but some believe that this is their attempt to draw in the US and UK into another middle eastern war which works further weaken them which is beneficial for the Iranian/Russia/China interests to establish a new world order.
Moving a step away from facts towards analysis: the Houthis are widely considered to be an arm of the IRGC (the IRGC counts them in their "axis of resistance"). The Houthi/Saudi war seems to have been instigated in large part by Iran, whose long term conflict with Saudi Arabia is probably the most salient in MENA.
It probably doesn't make much sense to talk about what set of concessions would get the Houthis to stop; they've attacked ships indiscriminately, and have been doing so long before October 7.
The only thing I’ll note is that groups can have multiple goals. While destruction of Jews/Israel may be a rallying call and was a founding principle, Houthis can want other things and do have other enemies (Saudia Arabia is disliked by Houthis independently of Iran’s conflict with them).
When all those leaders gather in one place how can our angry pitbull not froth at the mouth? Not saying it’s ethical, just that it’s purely rational.
You really think that's the only and most likely explanation?
This criticism is coming from the people being asked to make the weapons. Just because one isn't against the military having expanded capabilities, doesn't mean that one wants to spend their time creating things used to kill people.