The Nonsensical Case for the Illegal War in Yemen

The illegal war in Yemen makes no sense for U.S. interests, and it must end.

Kenneth McKenzie is the former head of Centcom, and he thinks the illegal war in Yemen is just great. Here is his defense of Trump’s bombing campaign:

First, we’re asserting the importance of free passage on the global commons; we are the world’s greatest maritime nation, and the concept of uncontested transit is fundamental to our security. Second, China is watching us, and will draw conclusions from our actions with Yemen about what we will or will not tolerate happening to Taiwan.

Bombing Yemen has done nothing to ensure the free passage of commerce through the Red Sea. Escalation has made shipping companies avoid that waterway like the plague, and ships aren’t going to come back until the conflict ends. Bombing is not going to restore the free passage of commerce. Even if the U.S. relied heavily on shipping through the Red Sea (it doesn’t), bombing Yemen wouldn’t be the way to safeguard it. This is an absurd justification for an unnecessary and ineffective war. There is no compelling reason for the U.S. to be bombing Yemen. It is a pointless expenditure of limited munitions at best, and there is a danger that it could lead to a larger conflict with Iran. The illegal war in Yemen makes no sense for U.S. interests, and it must end.

As a former head of Centcom, McKenzie must be pleased to see the U.S. throwing more money and weapons at the Middle East. McKenzie is a virulent Iran hawk, and when he was at Centcom he spouted the usual pro-Saudi propaganda lines about the Saudi coalition war on Yemen. This op-ed is in much the same vein. The second half of his argument is how the U.S. needs to threaten Iran more. He wants the U.S. to threaten Iran with attack to make the Iranian governmet fear for its survival:

If the survival of the clerical leadership is directly and credibly threatened, Iran will modify its behavior. We now have the tools and the will to create this threat in a meaningful manner.

McKenzie’s comments on Trump’s first term record in the Middle East confirm that he has poor judgment. He praises the decision to assassinate Soleimani as one of Trump’s “achievements.” The decision to kill Soleimani was one of Trump’s most reckless actions, and it brought the U.S. and Iran dangerously close to war. Dozens of American soldiers under McKenzie’s command suffered traumatic brain injuries in the Iranian missile attack that followed the assassination. It was only dumb luck that none of them was killed. McKenzie’s admiration for Trump’s decision tells me that he is a trigger-happy hardliner, and we should judge his cheerleading for bombing Yemen accordingly.

As for McKenzie’s remark about China, this is evidence of how flimsy the case for the war in Yemen really is. When hawks are at a loss, they fall back on incredibly stupid appeals to credibility. So now the U.S. has to keep bombing Yemen to send China a message about Taiwan somehow or other. It was bad enough when hawks insisted that the security of Taiwan depended on the defense of Ukraine, but now we’re supposed to believe that it also depends on blowing up people in Yemen.

To the extent that the Chinese government cares at all, they must be mildly amused that the U.S. is once again diverting more of its military assets to a region that doesn’t matter very much to our security. Watching the U.S. commit war crimes against Yemeni civilians is hardly going to impress or intimidate Chinese leaders. How the U.S. responds or doesn’t respond to Houthi attacks tells the Chinese government nothing about what the U.S. might do to defend Taiwan because the two cases have nothing in common. Wasting resources on yet another Middle Eastern military campaign certainly doesn’t signal that the U.S. is focused on East Asia.

The illegal war in Yemen is a symptom of one of the major flaws in our foreign policy. The U.S. is overcommitted in the Middle East, and it foolishly chooses to entangle itself in Middle Eastern conflicts when it has no reason to be involved. The U.S. has few interests in the region, but our government acts as if it is one of the most important parts of the world. The U.S. has been far too involved in this part of the world for at least the last thirty-five years, and our leaders keep choosing more entanglements. We have seen this in the disgraceful backing of Israel’s war and genocide in Gaza for the last eighteen months. Were it not for that war and genocide, there would be no conflict in the Red Sea in the first place, so one disastrous U.S. policy has led to another.

McKenzie has nothing to say about the war in Gaza except to mention it in passing in an attempt to blame the Houthis for civilian casualties caused by U.S. bombing. This is a familiar cynical move to dismiss the human costs of the war he supports. When our government chooses to wage war on another country in this fashion, it is the one responsible for the deaths and injuries that result from our bombs and missiles. Our government is choosing to do this to innocent Yemeni civilians. When an airstrike targets an apartment building to get at one man, that is a war crime. When a family home is blown up with children inside, that is a war crime:

When he lifted his head, the al-Zeini home was gone.

“Just like that, the house had collapsed into a smouldering heap of rubble and twisted metal,” the 30-year-old civil servant said.

“All 12 al-Zeinis – mostly women and kids – who were inside on a peaceful Ramadan evening, were killed,” he said in pain.

The al-Zeini family had been killed in a raid ordered by United States President Donald Trump.

When McKenzie cheers on the bombing of Yemen, this is what he is supporting. It’s despicable, and it can’t be allowed to continue.