Perhaps I shouldn’t, but I’m going to give the Pentagon the benefit of the doubt that they did not intend to strike a building in Saada, Yemen on Sunday night that was housing migrants from Africa. Early reports are that 68 African migrants are dead and dozens more are injured. Much of the detention center is in rubble. The strike follows the revelation that Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine, Chris Van Hollen and Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to the Pentagon last week asking it “to account for the scores of civilians reportedly killed in recent U.S. military strikes meant to target Houthi militants in Yemen.”
Remember, this is the braintrust that a month ago shared operatational details of planned attack on Yemen with a reporter on an insecure Signal app chat. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has been in the position for only three months and has already three top aides and a spokesman. The level of amateur incompetence on display is so high that I can’t safely assume the murder of these migrants was purposeful. In fact, I thought Trump had a fondness for foreign migrant detention centers, given that he wants to pay to house U.S. citizens in them.
On the other hand, Trump’s disdain for Africans is so monumental that plans to close 10 embassies and 17 consulates on the continent and “eliminate the bureau of African affairs, which oversees policy in sub-Saharan Africa” have been floating around the State Department. The idea that the Pentagon would decline orders to strike at African muslims is a bit undermined by Secretary Hegseth’s white power and “kafir” tattoos, as well as the incident in 2015 where he was drunkenly shouting “Kill all Muslims! Kill All Muslims!” in an Ohio bar.
I can’t rule anything out.
What’s clear is that the effort to deter Houthis from disrupting sea traffic in and around the Red Sea has changed in nature since the Biden administration left office.
Monitoring groups say the Trump administration has shifted the approach, moving from mainly striking Houthimilitary infrastructure to targeting its leaders. According to Airwars, a Britain-based watchdog organization, U.S. strikes were estimated to have killed 27 to 55 Yemeni civilians in March. The estimated casualty toll in April to date is believed to be much higher.
So far the Trump administration appears to be “choosing targets that pose a more direct risk to civilians and may indicate a higher tolerance to the risk of civilian harm,” Airwars said this month.
That was a prescient warning from Airwars, and also probably the simplest explanation.
We learned from the March 14 transcript of the Signal app chat that Vice-President J.D. Vance is temperamentally opposed to having the U.S. take the lead role in securing sea access to and from the Suez Canal. He wants the Europeans to take responsibility for this task and recommended a delay in the strikes. National Security Adviser Michael Waltz responded this way:
“Whether we pull the plug or not today European navies do not have the capability to defend against the types of sophisticated, anti-ship, cruise missiles, and drones the Houthis are now using.
“So whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes. Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.”
I don’t doubt that Waltz’s assessment of present European capabilities is accurate. What’s more, I acknowledge that even America appears incapable of deterring the Houthis from continuing to menace the shipping lanes. For these reasons, I am not reflexively opposed to searching for changes from the Biden administration’s efforts that might lead to better security.
But I strongly believe that a reckless disregard for innocent life is not going to advance that cause.
The truth is, our county is led by white nationalist Islamophobic fascists, and there’s really very little that will do that I can support. The only solution is for them to be defeated here at home, by the American people.
Only then will the possibility exist again to support U.S. foreign policy.
But that doesn’t mean every single thing they will do is wrong or unnecessary. The U.S. does need to take a lead role in securing shipping, at least for now. Bombing African migrant centers is not going to advance that cause, however, nor will a more general policy of killing scores of innocents in the hope of knocking out a few Houthi leaders.
Finally, it should go without saying that when America kills innocents abroad, it gives many people a moral justification in their minds to kill innocent Americans in response. When they do, we call it terrorism. It’s a cycle of death that helps no one.
We need a better solution.
