The U.S. – Saudi air campaign in Yemen is already a disaster. Please read the entire article from the LA Times.
“A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in discussing briefings on the air war, called it a ‘disaster,’ saying the Saudis don’t have a ‘realistic endgame’ for the bombing.
“U.S. officials are especially concerned about Al Qaeda’s reemergence in Yemen after years of drone strikes and other counter-terrorism operations had pushed them into the shadows. A special U.S. counter-terrorism team was forced to abandon the country last month.”
No air campaign like this can possibly be conducted without a great deal of planning and coordination. The U.S. role in Yemen has been absolutely essential.
The Saudis could not have launched such a campaign without the U.S. approval and cooperation. The attacks on the people of Yemen, aimed at the Houthis in particular, are very much the responsibility of the U.S. and Obama, who made the decision.
The U.S. is providing essential military components of the campaign.
As usual, what has happened as a result of the bombing was entirely predictable: the expansion of al-Qaeda, numerous civilian deaths and casualties, destruction of civilian targets, refugees, destruction of infra-structure, failure to achieve the military objective, exacerbation of regional tensions, a quagmire, the creation of a failed state, no known endgame, divisions among the aggressors, and destabilization of Saudi Arabia itself.
Why does Washington continue to make such poor, essentially irrational, decisions? Why do we see one folly after another?
The immorality of the applications of Washington’s power is well-understood even if it is not widely condemned. The utter failures and disasters of its foreign policy moves are not widely acknowledged by the public, nowhere near as much as they should be.
How many cases does it take before it becomes common knowledge that Washington, no matter what the party in control, has not been able to use military power to make this world a better place for at least since the end of World War II? Every one of its applications of such power has backfired.
Failure in Yemen is not the first time, not the only time. There is a pattern, an unmistakeable pattern of disaster and destruction whose immediate responsibility falls on the U.S. government. However, the general public, all of us, provide the foundation for these disasters and bear responsibility. The pattern of failure has not been widely recognized by voters or, if it is, has little or no effect on the candidates that the political process is producing. The public has tended to support its officials even as they make one blunder after another. Such loyalty and blindness to the realities mean that the public is to blame as well. A social-political system is at work here, and it’s dysfunctional.
The roster of Republicans now in the field and the sole leading Democrat, are all on record as supporting American foreign policy, up to and including its military means. Many of them embrace such means enthusiastically.
It seems to me that a high degree of irrationality has captured their minds.
To make these decisions, the leaders of the U.S. have to be making very poor assumptions about the realities of the situations they face. They are imagining threats that are unreal. They are not able to see the real options. They are trying to accomplish goals that shouldn’t even be on the U.S. agenda. They are over-estimating the uses of military power. They are trying to preserve and extend an empire that should be dismantled. They are wrapped up in their own rhetoric of exceptionalism. They lack foreign policy experience and historical memory. They are weak and vacillating. They are subject to pressures. They lack good input and intelligence because the system’s incentives are so poor. They are holding to simple-minded biases and slogans that they grew up with. They cannot see straight or think straight. They are trying to look strong. They do not know how to use power. America is being ruled by mediocre emperors, and this is a consequence of its flawed politics and democracy, its uneducated public, the influence of money on politics, widespread miseducation in many fields, and utter failures of its intellectual classes.
A great deal goes into such a sorry record of foreign policy decisions.
11:24 am on April 20, 2015
