After months of inaction aside from defensive shootdowns of drones and missiles, the United States Navy has finally started to take more direct action against the Houthi rebels terrorizing the Red Sea. 

As RedState has previously reported, the Yemini terrorist group has been attacking and hi-jacking merchant ships following the October 7th attack by Hamas on Israel.

On Sunday, a Maersk tanker came under fire, with an attempt to board being fought off by onboard security forces. That's when U.S. Navy SH-60 helicopters arrived on the scene, sinking three Houthi vessels, killing multiple terrorists, and generally giving them something to think about regarding future attacks. 

#Breaking: Houthi WAR has started!

CENTCOM: Iranian-backed Houthi boats attack MAERSK HANGZHOU in Southern Red Sea. On Dec. 31 at 6:30 am, four Houthi boats fired at the vessel, attempting to board. Security team onboard returned fire. U.S. Navy helicopters responded, and in… pic.twitter.com/hwH4BgchGI

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) December 31, 2023

BREAKING: U.S. Navy helicopters destroy 3 Iranian-backed Houthi gunboats in Red Sea after coming under attack, Centcom says

— Lucas Tomlinson (@LucasFoxNews) December 31, 2023

I do not think this is the start of full-scale hostilities against the Houthis, though that's how it's been played by more sensationalist social media accounts online. Rather, this feels like a defensive strike to keep the shipping lanes open. With that said, it is an escalation because, before this point, the Houthis were largely being given a pass to board ships and film cosplaying videos where they pretended to be operators.  

What took Joe Biden so long? That's a question that everyone should be asking. There was never any real risk in blowing these terrorists out of the water because the Houthis have no real capability to respond. Their most offensive weapons are still cold-war technology missiles that the U.S. Navy has the technology to easily defeat. So why let them run rampant for over two months when this could have been settled very early on? 

Even if the U.S. military chooses to carry out some air attacks on Houthi land-based positions, there's still little risk involved. You don't have to engage the Houthis in a ground war to make them irrelevant as a threat in the Red Sea, and that should be the goal. As Iran has shown throughout the increase in tensions during the Hamas-Israel war, they are good for little more than crying. The Mullahs aren't going to start a war with the United States because some of their proxies got blown up in Yemen. 

Biden's weakness is how we even got to this point. A confident and capable president would have put a stop to Houthi attacks in the Red Sea the moment they began to occur.