The Biden administration must want to demonstrate how absurd the ongoing illegal war in Yemen is by using strategic bombers to attack Houthi targets:
The U.S. military conducted airstrikes in Yemen against the Iranian-backed Houthis, targeting five underground weapons storage sites, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement late Wednesday. The strikes were carried out by B-2 Spirit bombers, marking the first use of these strategic stealth bombers against the Houthis.
The war that the U.S. has been waging in Yemen since January has been an extravagant waste of military resources. The U.S. has been burning through a limited supply of expensive munitions in a failed attempt to compel the Houthis to halt their attacks on shipping. Now it is wasting even more resources to send B-2s across the world to blow up weapons caches. Our government has impressive firepower at its disposal, but it is frequently employed in the service of brain-dead policies like the one the administration is pursuing in Yemen right now.
Military action was the wrong answer nine months ago, and it is still the wrong answer. The Houthis show no signs of stopping their attacks, and they have welcomed a direct conflict with the United States. The U.S. can impose “consequences” on the Houthis for another nine months and it isn’t likely to change anything. All that the U.S. is accomplishing is bolstering the Houthis politically and putting its ships and sailors at risk when there is no compelling reason to do so.
Biden’s war in Yemen is also a reminder of why the decision to initiate hostilities against another country should never be left to the executive alone. If there had been a serious debate over the wisdom of military action before the bombing started, it is doubtful that Congress would have authorized it. At the very least, the president would have had to make a case publicly for why using force was the best course of action available, and I don’t think that case would have withstood public scrutiny.
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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.