Whats weak about doing the smart thing?

American destroyers and aircraft carriers have been chased away from the Strait multiple times now.

Hilariously the USS George HW Bush had to go the long way around Africa rather than risk transiting the Bab El Mandeb after the Houthis defeated the US Navy last year.

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Jensson 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In what way were they chased away? Iran tried to sink them and didn't hit any shots, and many on Iran's side died trying. Many IRGC soldiers dying and not even scratching the paint on US vessels doesn't show US to be weak.

> Hilariously the USS George HW Bush had to go the long way around Africa rather than risk transiting the Bab El Mandeb after the Houthis defeated the US Navy last year.

Valuing the lives of your crewmen and avoid terrorists is bad how? USA not wanting their soldiers to die is weak? Would you want more deaths on US side to show strength?

USA can win this war with barely any casualties, why would you not do that? And USA being able to do this with barely any losses shows tremendous strength to me, Iran was more powerful than Ukraine but USA could establish aerial superiority immediately with no losses, this is so much stronger than what Russia displayed.

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srean 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Given how expensive they are they were presumably supposed to do more than primarily stay out of range. There are less expensive ways of doing that.

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Jensson 3 hours ago | parent [-]

They block Iranian ports so Iran can no longer export oil, that is doing a lot.

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srean 3 hours ago | parent [-]

And Iran has blocked the strait too. It's at best a stalemate.

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Jensson 3 hours ago | parent [-]

But this stalemate benefits US corporations by raising the price for oil, so its not really hurting the attacker. In order to hurt a plutocracy like USA you need to hurt the American stock market but American stocks are doing great.

	▲	srean 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That's true. Both USA and Russia should be quite happy with the current state of affairs. China not so much. Rest of the world is quite pissed with USA. But that's just emotion. Unless it gets realised into something concrete it matters little.
	▲	yongjik an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Trump is at -20% net approval and it's steadily getting worse even now. Seems like most Americans don't decide whether things are going great by looking at S&P 500.

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LorenPechtel 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

We are quite incapable of dealing with a mass attack by Iranian small boats with bombs.

	▲	Jensson 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They are not, they updated their tactics to account for that so they destroyed a lot of Iranian small boats with bombs trying to attack the vessels. If they were incapable of countering that we would have seen American casualties in these skirmishes but only Iranians died.

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chrisco255 19 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not one U.S. ship was damaged by the Houthis. Meanwhile airstrikes took out a ton of Houthi assets.

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ericmay an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> Hilariously the USS George HW Bush had to go the long way around Africa rather than risk transiting the Bab El Mandeb after the Houthis defeated the US Navy last year.

The ship went the long way around because why risk being attacked by missiles? It's less that the US Navy "was defeated", which itself is a plainly asinine comment which only serves a purpose of trying to incite others, and more so a practical safety concern.

But if you really want to argue that the US Navy was defeated, I would submit our next step should be to utilize nuclear weapons on Yemen and destroy the Houthis. That way you can't make these claims and we'll see who really is defeating who :)