The US and UK have reportedly struck over a dozen sites in Yemen using Tomahawk missiles and fighter jets, backed by logistical support from Australia, Canada, Bahrain and the Netherlands. A statement from President Biden asserts that the strikes against “targets in Yemen used by Houthi rebels” are a “direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea”.
What Biden does not mention in his statement about his administration’s “response” to Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea is the fact that those Red Sea attacks are themselves a response to Israeli crimes against humanity in Gaza. Also unmentioned is the fact that the strikes took place after the first day of proceedings in the International Court of Justice in which Israel stands accused by South Africa of committing a genocide in Gaza.
So the US and the UK just bombed the poorest country in the Middle East for trying to stop a genocide. Not only that, they bombed the very same country in which they just spent years backing Saudi Arabia’s genocidal atrocities which killed hundreds of thousands of people between 2015 and 2022 in an unsuccessful bid to stop the Houthis from taking power.
The Houthis, formally known as Ansarallah, threatened ahead of the attack to fiercely retaliate against any strikes from the US and its allies. Abdulmalik al-Houthi, who leads the Houthi movement, said that the response to any American attack “will be greater than” a recent Houthi offensive which used dozens of drones and several missiles.
“We, the Yemeni people, are not among those who are afraid of America,” al-Houthi said in a televised speech. “We are comfortable with a direct confrontation with the Americans.”
An unnamed US official who informed Huffington Post’s Akbar Shahid Ahmed about the imminent strikes on Yemen shortly before they occurred complained that the airstrikes “will not solve the problem” and that the approach “doesn’t add up to a cohesive strategy.”
Ahmed has previously reported that behind the scenes, officials in this administration have been getting increasingly nervous about the risk of Biden igniting a wider war in the middle east. This latest escalation, along with the Houthi pledge to retaliate, adds a lot of weight to this concern.
And all for what? To protect Israel’s ability to conduct a months-long massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.
This is what the US empire is. This is what it has always been about.
These people are showing us exactly who they are.
We should probably believe them.
Republished from Caitlin’s Newsletter on January 12, 2024.
Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin Johnstone is a reader-supported independent journalist from Melbourne, Australia. Her political writings can be found on Medium. Articles are re-posted from Caitlins Newsletter.