Daniel Mc Adams
With the inauguration finished and the protests finished (for now), the new Trump Administration has set about the business of governing. There may be a bit of inertia early on, as newly-confirmed Cabinet Secretaries take their positions and the second tiers are filled and so on. But early actions also tend to set the tone for an Administration and sharp breaks are noticeable right away.
Drone strikes in Yemen
That is why it was disheartening to learn that in his second full day in office, President Trump approved two drone strikes on Yemen — a country with which we are not at war but have been bombing since 2002. US military action in Yemen is ostensibly aimed at ridding the country of al-Qaeda, and the weekend’s victims were all said to be “al-Qaeda militants,” but in fact, US involvement in Yemen has been designed from at least 2015 to support Saudi Arabia’s attack on and invasion of the country.
After the Saudi-backed president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, was ousted by fighters of the Houthi tribe, Yemen’s northern neighbor launched an all-out assault to return Hadi to power.
Read more:Â Chinese seizure of US drone, in South China Sea, worries US and its allies
Saudi involvement in Yemen’s internal governing crisis has cost more than 10,000 lives and has left the already impoverished country on the verge of mass starvation. Infrastructure is decimated and yet the Saudis — armed with US-supplied weapons — continue to pound Yemen in support of their preferred president.
Fighting al-Qaeda
US military action in Yemen is ostensibly aimed at ridding the country of al-Qaeda, and the weekend’s victims were all said to be “al-Qaeda militants,” but in fact, US involvement in Yemen has been designed from at least 2015 to support Saudi Arabia’s attack on and invasion of the country.
It seems a textbook case of, at the least, being a conflict in which the US has no legitimate national security interest. But the neoconervatives and the interventionist media have framed it in terms designed to appeal to more US involvement. We are fighting al-Qaeda, they claim. But in Syria the US has been supplying al-Qaeda with weapons — indirectly and possibly directly — for years in hopes that they may succeed in overthrowing the secular Syrian government.
One reason the US has not been invited to participate in the latest round of Syria peace talks in Kazakhstan is Washington’s refusal to abide by its agreement to separate what it claims are US-backed “moderate” fighters from the al-Qaeda forces they fight alongside.
So Washington is not allergic to al-Qaeda when al-Qaeda is doing Washington’s bidding.
And undermining the “we must attack al-Qaeda” justification is the fact that the Houthis under attack by Saudi Arabia — backed by the US — are mortal enemies of al-Qaeda. So while the US claims it is fighting al-Qaeda in Yemen, it is in fact, most aggressively fighting al-Qaeda’s enemies in Yemen.
Iranian Proxy: A false war propaganda
Why is the US involved in such an incomprehensible mess? Iran! It is falsely claimed (again by the neocons and other interventionists) that the Houthi movement is in fact an Iranian-sponsored proxy in Yemen and as such represents the leading edge of an Iranian plan to dominate the Middle East.
While the Houthis do follow a form of Shi’ia Islam that is similar to that of the Iranians, the idea that they are an Iranian proxy is mere war propaganda.
Read more: Trump promises ‘America first’ and riddance of Islamic terror in his inauguration speech
In its actions in Yemen, the United States is backing a brutal Saudi dictatorship with a human rights record that makes Cuba look like Switzerland — and which we now know was deeply involved in the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
If there was ever a case to be made for keeping out of a Middle East crisis, Yemen is that case. But the United States government, subject to intense Saudi (and Israeli) lobbying efforts, is sucked into the ongoing battle to change the Iranian regime.
“Signature” strikes
So Washington is not allergic to al-Qaeda when al-Qaeda is doing Washington’s bidding.
Which brings us back to last weekend’s drone strikes, said to have killed ten “militants?” Of course they are all “militants” if they are killed by the US military. But in fact, the Pentagon still employs “signature” strikes, which are not aimed at specific targets but rather at a set of behaviors and other characteristics said by the Pentagon to indicate terrorist involvement.
How many civilians have been killed by these “signature” strikes? The Pentagon does not keep track, but it is likely in the thousands. And those thousands of civilians killed by US drones are the biggest recruiting tool for more terrorism and more anti-Americanism in the region. And round and round we go…
Radical Islamic terrorism?
President Trump is on record opposing any rapprochement with Iran and he claims that he will rid the world of “radical Islamic terrorism.” Unfortunately, he is likely misinformed by his own prejudices and misunderstanding of the region (and egged on by militarists in his midst), leading him to continue his predecessor’s counterproductive drone warfare program.
Read more:Â War and Democracy in the age of Trump
the Pentagon still employs “signature” strikes, which are not aimed at specific targets but rather at a set of behaviors and other characteristics said by the Pentagon to indicate terrorist involvement.
If President Trump continues Obama’s drone program — as early indications suggest is likely — he will not eradicate “radical Islamic terrorism.” He will in fact fertilize the seeds of a whole new generation of resentful anti-Americans who will plot their revenge against a foreign attacker who has no real reason to be involved in the region at all.
In short, Trump will expend blood and treasure in a manner that ensures that more blood is spilled and more treasure expended, ad infinitum.
Daniel McAdams served as the foreign affairs, civil liberties, and defense policy advisor to U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, MD (R-Texas) from 2001 until Dr. Paul’s retirement at the end of 2012. From 1993-1999 he worked as a journalist based in Budapest, Hungary, and traveled through the former communist bloc as a human rights monitor and election observer. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Global Village Space’s editorial policy.