Biden's Absurd War in Yemen Continues

Our government has impressive firepower at its disposal, but it is frequently employed in the service of brain-dead policies like the one the administration is pursuing in Yemen right now.

The Biden administration must want to demonstrate how absurd the ongoing illegal war in Yemen is by using strategic bombers to attack Houthi targets:

The U.S. military conducted airstrikes in Yemen against the Iranian-backed Houthis, targeting five underground weapons storage sites, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement late Wednesday. The strikes were carried out by B-2 Spirit bombers, marking the first use of these strategic stealth bombers against the Houthis.

The war that the U.S. has been waging in Yemen since January has been an extravagant waste of military resources. The U.S. has been burning through a limited supply of expensive munitions in a failed attempt to compel the Houthis to halt their attacks on shipping. Now it is wasting even more resources to send B-2s across the world to blow up weapons caches. Our government has impressive firepower at its disposal, but it is frequently employed in the service of brain-dead policies like the one the administration is pursuing in Yemen right now.

Military action was the wrong answer nine months ago, and it is still the wrong answer. The Houthis show no signs of stopping their attacks, and they have welcomed a direct conflict with the United States. The U.S. can impose “consequences” on the Houthis for another nine months and it isn’t likely to change anything. All that the U.S. is accomplishing is bolstering the Houthis politically and putting its ships and sailors at risk when there is no compelling reason to do so.

Biden’s war in Yemen is also a reminder of why the decision to initiate hostilities against another country should never be left to the executive alone. If there had been a serious debate over the wisdom of military action before the bombing started, it is doubtful that Congress would have authorized it. At the very least, the president would have had to make a case publicly for why using force was the best course of action available, and I don’t think that case would have withstood public scrutiny.

Instead of a proper debate and vote, the president ordered attacks on another country. He did this in response to the consequences of an atrocious war in Gaza that he was backing to the hilt. If Biden had taken a very different approach to the war in Gaza, that war might have ended months ago and the U.S. wouldn’t be pointlessly bombing Yemen. One terrible policy led to another.

Illegal presidential warfare has become so common over the last twenty-five years that it barely registers in Washington anymore. As long as the wars are small enough and they don’t involve many soldiers on the ground, Congress couldn’t care less and the president can even pretend that the U.S. isn’t “really” at war. Even so, the lie that the military isn’t fighting anywhere in the world isn’t fooling anyone when the U.S. is sending advanced bombers to the other side of the planet on attack runs.

The administration’s plan has been to try bombing the Houthis until they yield after they just endured almost a decade of intense bombardment from the U.S.-backed Saudi coalition. When that hasn’t worked, their backup plan has been to bomb them some more. The U.S. refuses to acknowledge the connection between the war in Gaza and the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, and so they cannot address the real cause of the conflict. Because the U.S. won’t pressure Israel to end the slaughter and siege in Gaza, it cannot end the attacks on shipping.

Biden should end this illegal war now, but we know he isn’t going to do that. One of the first things that the next president should do is to stop bombing Yemen and to insist on a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon. Ending Biden’s absurd war in Yemen should be an easy call for his successor.