US missile strikes continue to pound Yemen as the Middle East is on edge awaiting Iran’s response to the Israeli assassination of Hamas’s political chief in Tehran.
The Yemeni news agency Saba reported two US-British strikes in the Taiz province, which is on the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, the body of water that connected the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
So far, the US military hasn’t taken credit for airstrikes in Yemen on Tuesday, but US Central Command claimed that it downed one Houthi drone and two ballistic missiles over the Red Sea.
On Monday, CENTCOM said that it destroyed one “unmanned aerial system” in a strike on Houthi-controlled Yemen, which is where most Yemenis live, and claimed that it destroyed several Houthi drones and one ballistic missile over the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. CENTCOM also said that it conducted strikes in Yemen on August 3
The Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, have not backed down in the face of hundreds of US and British missile strikes, a bombing campaign that started in January. Instead, the Houthis have only escalated attacks on Israel-linked and other shipping in protest of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
The Houthis recently launched a drone that hit Tel Aviv, killing one Israeli, which Israel responded to with major strikes on the port of Hodeidah. It’s possible that the Houthis could take part in Iran’s reprisal attack on Israel, along with Hezbollah and Shia militias in Iraq and Syria. Houthi involvement in the reprisal attack could involve attacking US warships in the region since they are standing by to defend Israel.
The US has acknowledged that the Houthis would likely stop their attacks if there were a ceasefire in Gaza. But the Biden administration has refused to put real pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire and continues to provide military aid and political support, emboldening Israeli escalations in the region.
The US-backed Saudi/UAE war against the Houthis from 2015-2022 involved heavy airstrikes and a blockade, and the Houthis only became a more capable fighting force during that time.
The war killed at least 377,000 people, with more than half dying of starvation and disease caused by the siege. A ceasefire between the Houthis and Saudis has held relatively well since April 2022, but new US sanctions are now blocking the implementation of a lasting peace deal.
What on earth do they expect to accomplish?
Preventing a cease fire? Helping any way possible with the Israeli Endlosung? I'm trying to offer any remotely rational explanation I can think of, but if the actual answer involved magic, I'd believe that too.
Well said, well said!
Enrich the war industry and kill more civilians. Biden pretty much acknowledged that at one point when he said that the bombing was doing nothing to stop the blockade of Israeli shipping, and then in the very next sentence said that the bombing would continue.
WW3 chicken, bet it all just to stay in business a little bit longer…
"WW3 Chicken"
Is that chicken cooked by thermo-nuclear detonation?
Only if nobody avoids collision and fusion.
Pounding sand, is an American pastime.
Why do they hate US? It's a mystery.
I so enjoy irony W. Paine!
;-}
…What's that? …I can't hear you from all the bombs exploding. …You want to deescalate? …But you're bombing us right now!? …What's that? …That's your diplomacy!?
Biden: It's still Not Working…!
Austin: We need to drop more bombs then!
Biden: more bombs not working either…! Any other solutions…?!
Austin: more sanctions on Houthis and Iran…!
Biden: And Russia! There has to be some business in Russia that we haven’t sanctioned yet!
Austin: What does Russia have to do with this?
Biden: Who cares? Just find someone to sanction!
In the defense of U.S. shores? Nope.
Not even in defense of US shipping, all the shipping that wasn't associated with Israel continued to pass unimpeded until we started dumping tons or ordinance on them. Only after the fifth or sixth air strike did Ansar Allah extend the blockade to US and UK shipping.
Thanks Joe!
Colin Powell wrote in his memoir, “My American Journey” that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once asked him, "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?" Powell said he thought he would have an aneurysm.
Powell also said Albright, who once said the death of 500,000 Iraqi children due to U.S. sanctions was "worth it," was treating American GIs as "toy soldiers to be moved around on some global chessboard."
Of course he then proceeded to do the exact same thing when he was Secretary of State. He was a Republican though, so that made it all right.
Was Hillary Clinton a republican too?
In everything but name. The Clintons and Terry McAuliffe sold the Democratic Party to the deep pockets of the bankers and Wall Street in exchange for campaign contributions, and moved the Overton Window so far to the right that the Republicans of the 1970s (and into the ’80s, really) were further left than today’s Democrats.
Hillary was in fact a Teenage Republican growing up in suburban Chicago. She wore a “Goldwater Girl” sash in high school.
Yeah, but I don’t hold what people believed in high school against them, I’m embarrassed today by some of the things that I believed then. Of course she then kept those core beliefs, and that became a problem.
I wonder – is this bombing one of those "President can do stuff for XX days before consulting Congress" things, or is the action against Yemen somehow magickally covered by an early-'00s AUMF ?
I'd really like to see them take out a US warship, and by that I mean sink the thing with all hands. The only good US military is a dead US military. Same for the British military.