Another Pointless Round of Bombing in Yemen

The Red Sea is more dangerous for commercial shipping than it was, and the Houthi leadership seems to be more determined than ever to continue their attacks.

The illegal and pointless U.S. war in Yemen continues:

The U.S. and the United Kingdom conducted a series of strikes at 18 Houthi targets at eight different locations inside Yemen Saturday, part of a continuing effort to fight back against the Iran-backed group that has continued to attack commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea. 

The U.S. and Britain have been waging war in Yemen for the last six weeks. U.S. forces have been engaged in hostilities with the de facto government of a large part of another country without Congressional debate or authorization. The war they are fighting seems unlikely to end anytime soon. The Houthis have not been discouraged from further attacks. On the contrary, missile and drone attacks have increased and expanded since the U.S. launched its illegal campaign in January. The Red Sea is more dangerous for commercial shipping than it was, and the Houthi leadership seems to be more determined than ever to continue their attacks.

The president’s bad decision to escalate is producing almost all of the results that opponents predicted. U.S. military action is failing to achieve any of the administration’s stated goals. It is obvious that the U.S. should halt this campaign before things escalate further and before American sailors get injured or killed in the fighting, but knowing this administration and what passes for foreign policy wisdom in Washington we can expect more of the same indefinitely.

The framing of these strikes as “fighting back” is misleading at best. It was the U.S. and its allies that chose to escalate the conflict with attacks on Yemeni targets, and it was the U.S. and its allies that have refused to press for a ceasefire in Gaza that might actually end the threat to commercial shipping. The Biden administration has chosen to give the Houthis the confrontation they desire rather than confront the Israeli government whose slaughter in Gaza they support. As Gregory Johnsen explained this week, “the Houthis won’t be deterred because they want this confrontation with the United States.”

The only good news is that attacking the Houthis has not yet led to a larger conflagration, but the longer that this goes on the more destabilizing it will be for Yemen and for the wider region. Escalation has been a political boon for the Houthis, and they have been seeing a further influx of new recruits wanting to join their ranks. Most of their recruiting success was driven by their opposition to the war in Gaza beginning last fall, but some of it has also been driven by the U.S. and allied military campaign.

According to one analysis, some 37,000 new recruits have joined since the U.S. and its allies began the campaign last month. Even if this doesn’t lead to a renewal of the internal conflict in Yemen, it strengthens the Houthis against their local opponents. This isn’t the first time that a mindless U.S. policy has functioned as a recruiting sergeant for the very people that Washington claims to oppose, and it probably won’t be the last. The people of Yemen will pay the price for that now and in the future.

It is clear that this latest round of bombing will not stop the Houthis from launching more attacks. If the same pattern holds, these strikes will be answered with more defiant rhetoric and a new wave of attacks against both commercial ships and U.S. Navy vessels. U.S. sailors are being put at risk in an unnecessary war, and what’s worse is that they are being put at risk as part of an impossible mission. Almost everything that Americans hate about our wasteful foreign wars is on display here. The fact that the U.S. is fighting this war mostly to distract from the horrors of the atrocious war that our government is enabling makes the decision to escalate even more outrageous.