That seems to be the reflexive, go-to policy.
And of multiple governments. The US is bombing Yemen currently. Britain and America were doing it together last year.
And the Saudis and several other governments were doing it for many years before that, going back to 2015. I covered the Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen when it began here in 2015.
It’s been ten years then of bombardment of the poorest country in the Middle East. Much of it, beyond simply targeting the Houthis, instead destroyed infrastructure, killed countless civilians, and created humanitarian crises.
At one point, the Saudis were even bombing the food supply, creating famine: all while financially and logistically being supported by the US, Britain and the West. Tufts University scholar Alex de Waal described Yemen as “the greatest famine atrocity of our lifetimes.”
Coincidentally, much like the US, Britain and the West supports Israel’s rampage in Gaza. Small wonder then that the Houthis claim to feel great solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.
But yes, just bomb Yemen. Attack those pesky Houthis.
It’s funny watching various American commentators and Trump loyalists casually talking about ‘the Houthi terrorists’ when, one assumes, half of them had never heard of the Houthis until the embarrassing ‘Signal Chat Leak’ scandal recently.
Much less the fact that these guys are apparently such a serious terrorist threat that President Biden took them *off* the terrorist list.
Funnily enough, during the short-lived Gaza ceasefire (otherwise known as Trump’s fake-out peace agreement), the Houthis ceased all attacks on Red Sea shipping.
They only resumed their pesky disruption of trade when Israel spat in Trump’s face and eagerly resumed its war crimes in Gaza at first opportunity.
Thus the ‘terrorists’ in Yemen demonstrated once again what their public statements have always made perfectly clear: that their attacks on shipping are a retaliation for the War in Gaza.
But the American media and the MAGA White House would rather continue pretending that the Houthi operations are some random, unrelated act of barbarian menace against the civilised world.
“Everybody should recognize we are doing the world a great favor going after these guys…” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters last week.
So instead the Houthis, whose reach doesn’t extend beyond a very limited geographical area, are painted as some terrible terrorist entity.
In reality, like Hamas in Gaza, they have a very small area of influence and present virtually zero threat outside of that. Their interests lie strictly in their immediate native sphere.
In disrupting shipping in the area, they are simply fighting back in what limited capacity they can.
It’s also worth reiterating that, at the onset of the Saudi bombing campaign against the Houthis ten years ago, the Houthis were actually fighting primarily against Al-Qaeda in Yemen – and were making strong progress.
That whole lead-up to the brutal Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen was in fact riddled with curiosities involving US military and intelligence – which I covered here at the time.
None of which is to say that I’m a supporter of the Houthis or that I have any preferred side in the ongoing struggle for control of Yemen.
But that country – again, the poorest in the region – has been bombed back into the Stone Age for a decade now.
And the Houthis are still standing. Not only still standing – they must be stronger than they were ten years ago, because they presumably weren’t in any position to attack Red Sea shipping back then but they are now.
Which raises the obvious question: what has all of this bombing – whether by the Saudis, the Americans and British or the Israelis – accomplished?
If the Houthis are stronger than ever, then what was the point – other than the continued destruction of Yemeni infrastructure and the enormous killing of civilians?
Either the US and its allies need to be really embarrassed by all of this abject failure: or, perversely, the years of bombing was really just about dropping bombs for its own sake – like, literally just to use up stock and keep the military-industrial machine going.
Which, cynical though it is, might actually be the case.
As reported in the New York Times, ‘In just three weeks, the Pentagon has used $200 million worth of munitions, in addition to the immense operational and personnel costs to deploy two aircraft carriers, additional B-2 bombers and fighter jets, as well as Patriot and THAAD air defenses to the Middle East…’
The bombing is also a go-to card to make insecure leaders feel big and in control: especially US Presidents.
Trump seems to get an ego boost out of bombing the Houthis. But this isn’t new: when Bill Clinton was facing the Monica Lewinsky scandal back in 1998, he immediately began bombing Iraq – for absolutely no reason.
It was just to look big and tough again: while reeling off the standard script about Saddam Hussein being an intolerable threat to the West.
There’s great hypocrisy, of course. Perhaps none more obvious than in the soulless, dead-behind-the-eyes figure of Senator Tulsi Gabbard. Formerly a critic of the bombing of Yemen – including of the previous Trump administration’s bombing campaign – she (also part of the now infamous Signal Chat group) is now miraculously an advocate for the bombs dropping.
But this is the same Tulsi Gabbard who suddenly became ardently pro-Zionist and a supporter of Syrian regime change, after years of supposedly being the opposite.
Which neatly demonstrates how abject it’s all become.
Unsurprisingly, the US bombing operations killed a lot of civilians. Levelling an entire apartment building to take out one lone Houthi target will do that though.
National Security Advisor Mike Waltz was quoted in the leaked signal chat saying “The first target – their top missile guy – we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”
But as Reuters reported on March 31st, ‘the U.S. military has so far declined to confirm the death, and the identity of the Houthi commander in question is unclear.’
Which raises obvious questions about the reliability of the White Houses’s narratives. As well as its regard for collateral damage.
As James Rushmore writes at the Libertarian Institute, ‘Much of the media discourse surrounding Signalgate has focused on its national security implications. Nevertheless, the most important—and most overlooked—dimension of The Atlantic leak is the unvarnished look it provides at the Trump administration’s disregard for civilian life…’
But what’s new? That little desert country seems to be a testing area for bombs and munitions. It would be interesting to see reliable data on how much total explosive material has been unleashed onto that country in the last ten years.
But sure, bomb Yemen. Why not?
By now, we should just bomb Yemen out of habit or tradition, if nothing else.
