The attacks have been able to disrupt shipping and keep the U.S. and its allies tied down, frustrating the Navy’s decades-old mission of keeping open the region’s critical sea lanes.
American military says it has spent about $1 billion fighting Ansar Allah to support Israel's Gaza War. It has conducted more than 450 strikes and intercepting 200 drones and missiles.
U.S. officials worry that the conflict is simply not sustainable.
“Their supply of weapons from Iran is cheap and highly sustainable, but ours is expensive and our logistics tails are long. We are playing whack-a-mole, and they are playing a long game.”
https://archive.ph/VbNKQ
Americans seemingly can't grasp war as something more than k/d stats. You see it a lot in discussions about Ukraine, too; lots of them devolve to "but 1 gajillion russian casualties/destroyed materiel"
More than that, I think western arrogance just has a hard time admitting to losing in general. That whole capitalistic + supremacy thing of "winning means you have value and losing means you're worthless." They can't simultaneously dehumanize and value their entity as more than conquest. If the western empire cared about human life, it'd also be more secure in how it acts and what it can admit. But then it wouldn't be doing the violence it has done to so many peoples.
So I guess what I'm driving at here, is I think this sort of duplicitous language comes with the territory.