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The US Is Waging an Illegal War for Faster Shipping
Even as the Biden administration and Congress move forward with military solutions, there are alternatives to addressing the Houthi attacks on commercial shipping, namely, negotiating a cease-fire in Gaza.
Apr 04, 2024
The United States is waging an illegal war in Yemen, where major shipping routes along the country’s coastlines have been disrupted by ongoing violence in the region.
Despite widespread understanding in Washington that U.S. military operations in Yemen violate U.S. law, U.S. officials continue to insist that they must continue their military campaign, which they say is necessary to saving time and money on commercial shipping through the Middle East.
“The U.S. economy relies on open sea lanes,” U.S. General Michael Kurilla, the commander of U.S. Central Command, said at a March 7 Senate hearing, after being asked about the growing U.S. military presence in the Red Sea. “By our national security strategy, we will not allow a state or non-state actor to affect the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab al Mandeb, or the Suez Canal.”
Although some of the Houthis’ attacks have caused casualties, the major concern in Washington has been the implications for the global economy.
Since January 11, the United States has been directing airstrikes and other military operations in Yemen. U.S. military forces have been targeting the Houthis, a militant group that has been launching missiles and other attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea, Bab al Mandeb, and Gulf of Aden.
For months, the Houthis’ attacks have disrupted commercial shipping. The Houthis have insisted that they will continue their attacks until Israel ends it military offensive in Gaza.
Although some of the Houthis’ attacks have caused casualties, the major concern in Washington has been the implications for the global economy. As U.S. officials have repeatedly noted, as much as 15% of global trade passes through the Red Sea, including 12% of the sea-based oil trade.
“The reason it’s so important there is this,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained earlier this year. “15% of commercial traffic is going through that strait every single day.” That includes “30% of the world’s container ships.”
Of particular concern to U.S. officials is the Bab al Mandeb, a narrow strait along the southwestern coast of Yemen that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. An estimated 8.8 million barrels of oil are shipped through the strait every day, making it one of the world’s “strategic chokepoints,” as Gen. Kurilla described it.
Although the White House has insisted that President Joe Biden has the legal authority to take military action against the Houthis, several members of Congress have refuted its claims. At a Senate hearing in February, several senators called attention to the War Powers Resolution, which establishes that the president cannot continue hostilities for longer than 60 days without approval from Congress.
Regardless, Congress has failed to act, even now that the deadline has passed. March 12, the day that the White House was required to cease its military operations, “came, and went, in public silence,” as The Associated Press reported.
Even as the Biden administration and Congress move forward with an illegal war, there are alternatives to addressing the Houthi attacks on commercial shipping.
As some U.S. officials have acknowledged, the ideal and perhaps most obvious alternative would be to achieve a cease-fire in Gaza. After all, the Houthis continue to insist that they will not end their attacks until Israel ends its siege of Gaza.
“I am very keen to see that there is a cease-fire in Gaza,” U.S. Special Envoy to Yemen Timothy Lenderking said during a March 29 appearance on “Washington Journal.” “I do believe that we can use that moment to deescalate some of these other crises, including the Red Sea. We must get to that moment.”
Absent a cease-fire, however, it remains possible for commercial ships to circumvent the Middle East. Data compiled by the International Monetary Fund indicates that maritime trade is being redirected around Africa. In other words, commercial ships are taking advantage of other options for reaching their destinations.
The Biden administration has opposed both approaches, however. Not only has the administration continued to support Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, despite its acknowledgment of the worsening “humanitarian catastrophe,” as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described it, but the administration remains unwilling to tolerate the longer shipping times that are associated with the route around Africa.
“If you’re talking oil that comes through, we’re seeing a diversion of that,” Gen. Kurilla said at the March 7 Senate hearing. “It goes around the Cape of Good Hope. What that’s going to do is bring products late to market and price increases as well.”
Indeed, the priority of U.S. officials is to keep the Red Sea open for shipping. Their determination to maintain faster shipping is leading them to move forward with a war in Yemen that they know is illegal, even as they come to recognize more sensible options.
The first step in getting to a “just settlement” in Yemen “is the cease-fire in Gaza,” Lenderking said. “I think we can use that diplomatically to deescalate the situation in the Red Sea.”
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Where Are the Progressives as Biden Marches Toward War?
This should be a four-alarm fire. Is there anyone effectively organizing against Biden just casually leading us into another war?
Jan 31, 2024
The general silence around the progressive establishment as the current Democratic administration prepares to launch military strikes against more foreign targets risking a wider war in the Middle East is so depressing and disconcerting.
As deeply disturbed I am about Rep. Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) recent bizarre and absurd attacks on peace advocates, I am even more distressed about the prospect of a casual stroll into an all out war against Iran in response to the militia attack on U.S. military personnel near the Jordan/Syria border over the weekend, which killed three Americans and wounded dozens more. Why U.S. troops are even there to begin with is a whole other matter.
Since Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel’s invasion of Gaza in response, Biden administration officials and the president himself have repeatedly said they do not want the conflict to spiral out of control in the region. But in response to the attack on U.S. troops at the Jordan/Syria border, President Biden is reportedly considering “striking Iranian personnel in Syria or Iraq or Iranian naval assets in the Persian Gulf” which, if he follows through, could carry with it a tit-for-tat path of escalation that risks spiraling out of control.
Biden and his team are sleepwalking into a direct war in the Middle East, a course of action that will be beyond devastating...
Also, the Biden administration apparently does not see a link between U.S. support for Israel’s carnage in Gaza and the violence in the Red Sea and elsewhere in the region. Instead, Politico reported this week that an unnamed U.S. official “poured cold water on a pair of alternative options the U.S. could take: Reassessing troop deployments in the region and pressuring Israel to end fighting in Gaza, since that’s what has been angering the proxy groups.”
The same report, however, quoted former State Department official and international law expert Brian Finucane saying that “non-military options are likely to be more effective at bringing about an end to attacks on U.S. troops.”
Keep in mind President Biden is already on record saying that recent U.S. strikes targeting the Houthis haven’t been working. Furthermore, Qatar has already reportedly warned that U.S. retaliation to strikes in Jordan could hurt the ongoing hostage negotiations.
There have been some in the progressive foreign policy space offering sober, level-headed progressive approaches on how to diffuse the tension. For example, Matt Duss, former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, has suggested better non-military options like negotiating a new Iran nuclear deal, pushing for a legitimate two-state solution, and conditioning U.S. military aid to Israel. “Ultimately, you need to get to some kind of modus vivendi of which Iran is a part," he said.
Win Without War, a grassroots-focused group that promotes progressive foreign policy, has been on point as usual with their messaging imploring President Biden to change his current course in the Middle East.
But apart from that, there are not many people speaking out from the progressive mainstream and there are very few, if any calls to action.
Meanwhile, many on the right wing are filling the void and talking the most sense about the situation at this moment. For example, Tucker Carlson called Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) “f*cking lunatics” for calling on Biden to attack Iran. Former GOP presidential candidate and now Trump surrogate Vivek Ramaswamy blasted Graham and Nikki Haley for "giddily calling" for war: "It's disgusting & says a lot about the kind of GOP they're trying to recreate," Ramaswamy tweeted. And Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) piled on, asking Graham, "Is there anyone you don't want to bomb?"
This should be a four-alarm fire. If I was at my old job running the political advocacy programs at CREDO Mobile today, emails would be going out lighting up the Capitol Hill switchboards trying to prevent a Democratic president from leaning even further into this maddening military conflict (which is exactly what we did a handful of times during the Obama administration).
Where is the leadership from the Left — leaders at big organizations with outsized email programs and social media assets to deploy?
What is happening? Is there anyone effectively organizing against Biden just casually leading us into another war?
I fully support an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an immediate release of all hostages. Those two outcomes are linked. And, I admire everyone pouring their heart and soul into their advocacy to make that a reality.
But, right now, President Biden and his team are sleepwalking into a direct war in the Middle East, a course of action that will be beyond devastating and one that requires the Left’s urgent attention.
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Biden's Choice: Gaza Cease-Fire or Devastating Regional War?
Biden can continue to give Israel carte-blanche to wipe out the people of Gaza and watch as the region becomes further engulfed in flames. Or he can take the path that leads to peace.
Jan 25, 2024
In the topsy-turvy world of corporate media reporting on U.S. foreign policy, we have been led to believe that U.S. air strikes on Yemen, Iraq, and Syria are legitimate and responsible efforts to contain the expanding war over Israel’s genocide in Gaza, while the actions of the Houthi government in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran and its allies in Iraq and Syria are all dangerous escalations.
In fact, it is U.S. and Israeli actions that are driving the expansion of the war, while Iran and others are genuinely trying to find effective ways to counter and end Israel’s genocide in Gaza while avoiding a full-scale regional war.
We are encouraged by Egypt and Qatar’s efforts to mediate a cease-fire and the release of hostages and prisoners-of-war by both sides. But it is important to recognize who are the aggressors, who are the victims, and how regional actors are taking incremental but increasingly forceful action to respond to genocide.
Biden has admitted that U.S. bombing will not force Yemen to lift its blockade, but he insists that the U.S. will keep attacking it anyway.
A near-total Israeli communications blackout in Gaza has reduced the flow of images of the ongoing massacre on our TVs and computer screens, but the slaughter has not abated. Israel is bombing and attacking Khan Younis, the largest city in the southern Gaza Strip, as ruthlessly as it did Gaza City in the north. Israeli forces and U.S. weapons have killed an average of 240 Gazans per day for more than three months, and 70% of the dead are still women and children.
Israel has repeatedly claimed it is taking new steps to protect civilians, but that is only a public relations exercise. The Israeli government is still using 2,000-pound and even 5,000-pound “bunker-buster” bombs to dehouse the people of Gaza and herd them toward the Egyptian border, while it debates how to push the survivors over the border into exile, which it euphemistically refers to as “voluntary emigration.”
People throughout the Middle East are horrified by Israel’s slaughter and plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, but most of their governments will only condemn Israel verbally. The Houthi government in Yemen is different. Unable to directly send forces to fight for Gaza, they began enforcing a blockade of the Red Sea against Israeli-owned ships and other ships carrying goods to or from Israel. Since mid-November 2023, the Houthis have conducted about 30 attacks on international vessels transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden but none of the attacks have caused casualties or sunk any ships.
In response, the Biden administration, without Congressional approval, has launched at least six rounds of bombing, including airstrikes on Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. The United Kingdom has contributed a few warplanes, while Australia, Canada, Holland, and Bahrain also act as cheerleaders to provide the U.S. with the cover of leading an “international coalition.”
President Biden has admitted that U.S. bombing will not force Yemen to lift its blockade, but he insists that the U.S. will keep attacking it anyway. Saudi Arabia dropped 70,000 mostly American (and some British) bombs on Yemen in a 7-year war, but utterly failed to defeat the Houthi government and armed forces.
Yemenis naturally identify with the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, and a million Yemenis took to the street to support their country’s position challenging Israel and the United States. Yemen is no Iranian puppet, but as with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s Iraqi and Syrian allies, Iran has trained the Yemenis to build and deploy increasingly powerful anti-ship, cruise and ballistic missiles.
The Houthis have made it clear that they will stop the attacks once Israel stops its slaughter in Gaza. It beggars belief that instead of pressing for a ceasefire in Gaza, Biden and his clueless advisers are instead choosing to deepen U.S. military involvement in a regional Middle East conflict.
The United States and Israel have now conducted airstrikes on the capitals of four neighboring countries: Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Iran also suspects U.S. and Israeli spy agencies of a role in two bomb explosions in Kerman in Iran, which killed about 90 people and wounded hundreds more at a commemoration of the fourth anniversary of the U.S. assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020.
On January 20th, an Israeli bombing killed 10 people in Damascus, including 5 Iranian officials. After repeated Israeli airstrikes on Syria, Russia has now deployed warplanes to patrol the border to deter Israeli attacks and has reoccupied two previously vacated outposts built to monitor violations of the demilitarized zone between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Iran has responded to the terrorist bombings in Kerman and Israeli assassinations of Iranian officials with missile strikes on targets in Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan. Iranian Foreign Minister Amir-Abdohallian has strongly defended Iran’s claim that the strikes on Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan targeted agents of Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
Eleven Iranian ballistic missiles destroyed an Iraqi Kurdish intelligence facility and the home of a senior intelligence officer, and also killed a wealthy real estate developer and businessman, Peshraw Dizayee, who had been accused of working for the Mossad, as well as of smuggling Iraqi oil from Kurdistan to Israel via Turkey.
The targets of Iran’s missile strikes in northwest Syria were the headquarters of two separate ISIS-linked groups in Idlib province. The strikes precisely hit both buildings and demolished them, at a range of 800 miles, using Iran’s newest ballistic missiles called Kheybar Shakan or Castle Blasters, a name that equates today’s U.S. bases in the Middle East with the 12th- and 13th-century European crusader castles whose ruins still dot the landscape.
Iran launched its missiles, not from north-west Iran, which would have been closer to Idlib, but from Khuzestan province in south-west Iran, which is closer to Tel Aviv than to Idlib. So these missile strikes were clearly intended as a warning to Israel and the United States that Iran can conduct precise attacks on Israel and U.S. “crusader castles” in the Middle East if they continue their aggression against Palestine, Iran, and their allies.
At the same time, the U.S. has escalated its tit-for-tat airstrikes against Iranian-backed Iraqi militias. The Iraqi government has consistently protested U.S. airstrikes against the militias as violations of Iraqi sovereignty. Prime Minister Sudani’s military spokesman called the latest U.S. airstrikes “acts of aggression,” and said: “This unacceptable act undermines years of cooperation... at a time when the region is already grappling with the danger of expanding conflict, the repercussions of the aggression on Gaza.”
After its fiascos in Afghanistan and Iraq killed thousands of U.S. troops, the United States has avoided large numbers of U.S. military casualties for ten years. The last time the U.S. lost more than a hundred troops killed in action in a year was in 2013, when 128 Americans were killed in Afghanistan.
Since then, the United States has relied on bombing and proxy forces to fight its wars. The only lesson U.S. leaders seem to have learned from their lost wars is to avoid putting U.S. “boots on the ground.” The U.S. dropped over 120,000 bombs and missiles on Iraq and Syria in its war on ISIS, while Iraqis, Syrians, and Kurds did all the hard fighting on the ground.
In Ukraine, the U.S. and its allies found a willing proxy to fight Russia. But after two years of war, Ukrainian casualties have become unsustainable and new recruits are hard to find. The Ukrainian parliament has rejected a bill to authorize forced conscription, and no amount of U.S. weapons can persuade more Ukrainians to sacrifice their lives for a Ukrainian nationalism that treats large numbers of them, especially Russian speakers, as second-class citizens.
Now, in Gaza, Yemen, and Iraq, the United States has waded into what it hoped would be another “U.S.-casualty-free” war. Instead, the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza is unleashing a crisis that is spinning out of control across the region and may soon directly involve U.S. troops in combat. This will shatter the illusion of peace Americans have lived in for the last ten years of U.S. bombing and proxy wars, and bring the reality of U.S. militarism and war-making home with a vengeance.
Biden can continue to give Israel carte-blanche to wipe out the people of Gaza, and watch as the region becomes further engulfed in flames, or he can listen to his own campaign staff, who warn that it’s a “moral and electoral imperative” to insist on a cease-fire. The choice could not be more stark.
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