[lemon_zest]

It kinda gets buried under the utter incompetence of these clowns but why are we even bombing Yemen? How is it acceptable to brazenly destroying other countries’ civil infrastructure? It’s a US president’s pastime activity since Obama

[ty6853]

Obama started doing it as a concession to the Saudis for our policies in the ME. More recently Yemen has pirated ships as an immediate response to our support and funding of mass murder of civilians in Palestine. So the Yemenis are not blameless and there is some sort of valid reasoning for the attacks, but to be clear we are the instigator here.

[lemon_zest]

Agreed, mine was more of a rhetorical question. The concession was that we allowed the Saudis to bomb them and further excarcerbate the civil war in Yemen. Now because they are blockading shipments in protest of the current onslaught in Gaza we are pummeling them for it. We sure do have a taste for war crimes in the region.

[Balgair]

The other issue is that these bombing will accomplish nothing of value. These rebels have been bombed to the stone age by Saudi already. The cost of the sorties is vastly larger than anything the rebels are sending. Yes, some 'show the colors' is needed to assuage allies and merchants. It ends up being very expensive 'grass cutting'.

But real change there is going to require boots on the ground. And none of the players in the region want that. So, we just spend a $80,000 on a missile for a guy to shoot that doesn't make that in a year at a guy that doesn't make that in a lifetime.

[JumpCrisscross]

> real change there is going to require boots on the ground

Or bombing their sponsors. I’m not an advocate of war with Iran. But it makes more sense than blowing up desert mountains.

[HDThoreaun]

To stop the houthis from sinking/pirating container ships.

[TiredOfLife]

TIL that ballistic missiles are civil infrastructure

[JumpCrisscross]

> why are we even bombing Yemen?

Houthis are bombing unarmed civilian ships in the Red Sea. This makes zero sense for Yemen. But it does, politically, for the Houthis. Put another way, the extremists in one government are bombing another country because of what the extremists in that country are up to.

[mvdtnz]

I wish the government would stop calling them rebels and call them what they are - the defacto government of Yemen.

[JumpCrisscross]

> what they are - the defacto government of Yemen

The Houthis are a belligerent in a civil war with multiple sides [1], none of which could stand without external backing. They're not a ragtag group of rebels. But they're also not the government of Yemen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_civil_war_(2014%E2%80%9...

[TremendousJudge]

But then it would sound as if they were bombing a sovereign nation instead of doing pacekeeping

[morkalork]

Not since Bush and Iraq's non-existent WMDs? Or Vietnam or countless other conflicts got involved in under the Monroe doctrine?