Kenneth McKenzie is the former head of CENTCOM, and he thinks the illegal war in Yemen is just great. Here is his defense of Trump’s bombing campaign:
First, we’re asserting the importance of free passage on the global commons; we are the world’s greatest maritime nation, and the concept of uncontested transit is fundamental to our security. Second, China is watching us, and will draw conclusions from our actions with Yemen about what we will or will not tolerate happening to Taiwan.
Bombing Yemen has done nothing to ensure the free passage of commerce through the Red Sea. Escalation has made shipping companies avoid that waterway like the plague, and ships aren’t going to come back until the conflict ends. Bombing is not going to restore the free passage of commerce. Even if the U.S. relied heavily on shipping through the Red Sea (it doesn’t), bombing Yemen wouldn’t be the way to safeguard it. This is an absurd justification for an unnecessary and ineffective war. There is no compelling reason for the U.S. to be bombing Yemen. It is a pointless expenditure of limited munitions at best, and there is a danger that it could lead to a larger conflict with Iran. The illegal war in Yemen makes no sense for U.S. interests, and it must end.
As a former head of CENTCOM, McKenzie must be pleased to see the U.S. throwing more money and weapons at the Middle East. McKenzie is a virulent Iran hawk, and when he was at CENTCOM he spouted the usual pro-Saudi propaganda lines about the Saudi coalition war on Yemen. This op-ed is in much the same vein. The second half of his argument is how the U.S. needs to threaten Iran more. He wants the U.S. to threaten Iran with attack to make the Iranian government fear for its survival:
If the survival of the clerical leadership is directly and credibly threatened, Iran will modify its behavior. We now have the tools and the will to create this threat in a meaningful manner.
McKenzie’s comments on Trump’s first term record in the Middle East confirm that he has poor judgment. He praises the decision to assassinate Soleimani as one of Trump’s “achievements.” The decision to kill Soleimani was one of Trump’s most reckless actions, and it brought the U.S. and Iran dangerously close to war. Dozens of American soldiers under McKenzie’s command suffered traumatic brain injuries in the Iranian missile attack that followed the assassination. It was only dumb luck that none of them was killed. McKenzie’s admiration for Trump’s decision tells me that he is a trigger-happy hardliner, and we should judge his cheerleading for bombing Yemen accordingly.
As for McKenzie’s remark about China, this is evidence of how flimsy the case for the war in Yemen really is. When hawks are at a loss, they fall back on incredibly stupid appeals to credibility. So now the U.S. has to keep bombing Yemen to send China a message about Taiwan somehow or other. It was bad enough when hawks insisted that the security of Taiwan depended on the defense of Ukraine, but now we’re supposed to believe that it also depends on blowing up people in Yemen.
Read the rest of the article at Eunomia
Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.
