{"id":45566,"date":"2024-01-23T07:04:27","date_gmt":"2024-01-23T15:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=45566"},"modified":"2024-01-23T07:04:27","modified_gmt":"2024-01-23T15:04:27","slug":"bidens-sustained-campaign-in-yemen-is-illegal-and-pointless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/23\/bidens-sustained-campaign-in-yemen-is-illegal-and-pointless\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden’s ‘Sustained Campaign’ in Yemen Is Illegal and Pointless"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. and Britain continue to wage war<\/a> on Yemen while pretending that they aren\u2019t at war:<\/p>\n

The U.S. and U.K. launched strikes against eight Houthi targets Monday, the two countries said, in a continuing bid to stop the Yemeni rebel group\u2019s attacks on ships transiting the Red Sea.<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The strikes marked the second major assault by a joint force of the two countries and the eighth time overall that the U.S. has targeted the group, which is armed, funded and supported by Iran.<\/i><\/p>\n

The latest round of attacks is part of the Biden administration\u2019s plan for a \u201csustained campaign\u201d<\/a> that Congress has never debated or authorized. The U.S. has dubbed<\/a> the campaign Operation Poseidon Archer, and the administration has no idea when it will be concluded. According to the Post, U.S. officials say<\/a> that they \u201cdon\u2019t expect that the operation will stretch on for years like previous U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria,\u201d but that is not much of a consolation when the administration can\u2019t even admit that it is fighting a war.<\/p>\n

Knowing how our government tends to prolong and alter its military missions once they start, it isn\u2019t hard to imagine the current campaign morphing into something else over time. The troops that are now in Syria were sent there to fight ISIS, but now they stay there to oppose Iranian influence and serve as targets for local militias. U.S. forces have been fighting in Somalia for more than a decade and a half, and there is no sign that they are leaving anytime soon. Once U.S. forces are involved in hostilities in a country, there is considerable resistance to extricating them. Even if the new war in Yemen turns out to be the limited one that the administration claims that it is, that won\u2019t change the fact that it is illegal and unauthorized. If support for the Saudi coalition war on Yemen merited a war powers challenge (and it absolutely did), direct military action in Yemen definitely requires that Congress step up and put a stop to the president\u2019s illegal war.<\/p>\n

Besides being illegal, the new war in Yemen is pointless. No one expects that the campaign will achieve its stated goal, but that isn\u2019t going to stop the administration from pressing ahead with military action that the president himself has acknowledged isn\u2019t working. Spencer Ackerman, author of Reign of Terror<\/a><\/em>, commented<\/a> on Biden\u2019s determination to continue the strikes:<\/p>\n

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia<\/a>. He is former senior editor at<\/i> The American Conservative. He has been published in the<\/i> New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and<\/i> Culture11, and was a columnist for<\/i> The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. and Britain continue to wage war on Yemen while pretending that they aren\u2019t at war: The U.S. and U.K. launched strikes against eight Houthi targets Monday, the two countries said, in a continuing bid to stop the Yemeni rebel group\u2019s attacks on ships transiting the Red Sea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-45566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"That isn\u2019t going to stop the administration from pressing ahead with military action that the president himself has acknowledged isn\u2019t working."},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45566"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45571,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45566\/revisions\/45571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45566"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=45566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}