Undeterred by the disastrous commando raid on Yemen in the first days of his Administration, where plenty of civilians were killed but the target got away, President Donald Trump has escalated US military involvement in the tragic Yemen conflict to an unprecedented level. In fact as Foreign Policy reports, the US President has bombed Yemen more in the past week than President Obama (no peacenik) has bombed in a year.
But although the US escalation in Yemen is sold back home as another aggressive front in the war against al-Qaeda, in fact US operations in Yemen are actually helping al-Qaeda as well as its chief sponsor, Saudi Arabia.
The problem is that because his advisors are increasingly drawn from the neocon camp, the advice he is given is filtered through the “noble lie” that the neocons view as the central tenet of their faith. Thus even though the main enemies of al-Qaeda in Yemen are the Houthis, because Trump has been sold the neocon lie that the Houthis are Iranian proxies Trump is droning Yemen back to the stone age to the advantage of al-Qaeda and Saudi Arabia, who are on the same side.
While it is arguable that the President has authority under the authorization for the use of military force against those attacked us on 9/11 to attack al-Qaeda in Yemen, very few would argue that such authorization extends to actually helping al-Qaeda in Yemen.
Meanwhile, US drone attacks are killing civilians in Yemen and contributing to the genocide of the Yemeni people whose only crime is to have rejected a president who ran unopposed – a US-backed “Arab Spring” candidate – and who immediately approved US drone strikes on his own country.
The Trump State Department is going all in. A sale of anti-Houthi weapons to Saudi Arabia that even the Obama administration rejected was hastily approved by the new Administration and soon will be deployed in Saudi Arabia’s war of aggression against its neighbor.
The Trump Administration is doubling down on all of President Obama’s mistakes. Siding with al-Qaeda in Yemen on the false notion that it is fighting a proxy war against Iran.
The neocons are running circles around the new US President. Deal-maker? On foreign affairs, he’s more like a vulnerable rube walking into a used car lot populated by shark car salesmen.
By the way, the Pentagon just finished investigating the Pentagon over the disastrous Yemen raid – where scores of civilians were gunned down by the US military in cold blood but they missed the claimed target. It may shock you, but the Pentagon found that the Pentagon had done nothing wrong. Investigation complete!
Daniel McAdams is director of the The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity. Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.