Yemen War is a FUBAR Mess

We need to sprint away from Yemen. Don't walk, saunter, stroll, jog, or trot.
We should be running at top speed to get out of there like our pants and hair are on fire.

The reasons I say this are many, but let's start with the botched Yemen raid that killed 16 women and children. It turns out that massacring civilians wasn't the only thing botched about that raid.

The main figure killed in last month’s US raid in Yemen targeting Al-Qaeda was a tribal leader who was allied to the country’s US- and Saudi-backed president and had been enlisted to fight Yemen’s Houthi insurgents, according to military officials, tribal figures and relatives.

Hadi is the exiled Yemen President that our Saudi-led allies are trying to re-install.

Al-Qaeda has also emerged as a de facto ally of the government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi in a grueling civil war that has wreaked devastation, caused widespread hunger and killed more than 10,000 since late 2014.

This should be a big clue just how f'd up this whole operation is.
Yet, it's only one clue because the Yemen War is much, MUCH, MUCH worse than this example.
This complicated an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-sometimes-my-frenemy thing just keeps getting worse.

Yemen's local al Qaeda wing appealed for help on Thursday to fend off an offensive by the armed Houthi movement in central Yemen, and accused the United States of coordinating attacks with the Iran-aligned group, according to an online statement.
Residents say tribesmen in Ansar al-Sharia, the local wing of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and other Islamists known as salafists are the main force holding back the Houthis in Qifa in al-Bayda province, where President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's internationally-recognized government has little control.

Are we with the Houthis and against the al-Qaeda, who happen to be with Hadi and the Saudis, who are supposed to be our allies against the Houthis?
I honestly can't say for sure, but I can say that this isn't even the most f'd up part.

Remember this is a Saudi-led coalition. One of the chief coalition allies is United Arab Emirates, and they have a problem.

The United Arab Emirates is reported to have warned Saudi Arabia to abandon its support for Yemen’s President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi or it will withdraw its troops from the Saudi-led coalition, Yemen’s Hadramout News weekly reported.
...
This comes as the UAE is accused of seeking to occupy the south of Yemen and exercise a unilateral policy in the area as well as suppress the goals of the Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia to restore legitimacy in Yemen.

Restoring Hadi was supposed to be the justification to invading Yemen. It seems that UAE has other plans.
To make matters worse, UAE has problems with more than just the Saudis.

The Sudanese army has a legitimate right to take over supervisory control of the Aden International Airport in southern Yemen, sources in the Sudanese capital Khartoum said.
The claim comes days after a faction of the southern Yemeni army which was protecting the airport, under the supervision of the UAE army, came under attack from Sudanese soldiers who are part of the Saudi-led coalition and are allied with the officially recognised President of Yemen, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Before we go any further, it's important to consider just who the UAE forces are.
Are they Blackwater mercenaries?

A spokesman for the Yemeni army told Russian media that hundreds of mercenaries are fighting in his country on behalf of Saudi Arabia and its allies.
“They hire poor people from around the world to take part in the hostilities. Among them are Somalis and people from Sudanese tribes,” Brig. Gen. Sharaf Ghalib Luqman told the state-operated Russian news agency RIA Novosti, according to a Jan. 19 report from Sputnik, the agency’s international arm.
“However, there are also Europeans, Americans, Colombians. These are contractors from a structure known as Blackwater. This division includes around 400 people.”

Maybe, maybe not. Shortly after this article was published, there was this one.

Mercenaries from DynCorp have entered Yemen to fight for the Saudi-led coalition after fighters from the infamous Blackwater group were routed by the Houthis.

So which Colombian mercenaries, working for an American multi-national corporation, hired out for billions of dollars by the UAE to fight alongside the Saudis, or maybe to undermine Saudi interests, will aid the cause of al-Qaeda in Yemen to restore, or prevent, Hadi from taking office, while fighting alongside, or against, Seal Team 6?
Speaking of Seal Team 6, they are already getting sent out for new raids to botch.

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for backing away from regime change wars. Looks like Trump will defer to his Generals and let the EU deal with the refugees.

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chuck utzman

TULSI 2020

detroitmechworks's picture

I hate mercenaries.

Mercenaries have a well deserved reputation, made even fouler by the corporate machinations used to hide their activities and culpability.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

CB commented in another thread about the difficulty other governments have deciphering our foreign policy and quoted Russia's Maria Zakharova about Syria.

http://caucus99percent.com/comment/249341#comment-249341

Maria Zakharova: …The position which had to be implemented on the international arena as a consolidated US approach (the international community was supposed to understand this policy, because the issue is about the actions on the international arena), simply was not there. First, there was one concept, then it changed. In the last six months before the elections, we witnessed agony of Washington’s Syrian policy. On the one hand, there was increased activity in the foreign policy area, and, on the other hand, there was activity which was absolutely not supported by the on-the-ground actions of the US military. Do you remember the gap between the position of certain forces in the State Department and the US military?

But we do consistently bring HELL to the people we say we're liberating. Privatized, Unaccountable, Corrupt-to-the-Point-of-Insanity, HELL ON WHEELS.

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edg's picture

Could a president, Trump or Sanders or anyone else, even stop our misbegotten wars if they wanted to? Or is the deep state too powerful and too much in control of decision making? Trump talked a good game, but his talk has sure gotten mushy since the election.

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dervish's picture

these clowns can't keep it straight after literally decades in-theater. How much better off everyone would be if we just minded our own business.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

@dervish

Same BS, different war

these clowns can't keep it straight after literally decades in-theater. How much better off everyone would be if we just minded our own business.

Absolutely, but if American business interests would mind their own without interference in public policy or demanding global monopolies and hegemony, none of these problems would exist.

It always comes back to the pathologically greedy corporate interests/billionaires for whom there is never enough because anything anyone else has, has somehow been stolen from them.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

dystopian's picture

Our jets are refueling the Saudi Fighter jets so they can make the round trip flight required of their Yemen bombing missions. Of course we sold them the jets, and the bombs, and my guess is we have the meter running on the tankers doing the refueling. America, what a country, and this war gambit is a great business. The Yemen thing could not happen without US support. Which means we are complicit, like say for any war crimes taking place.
Is it the Straights of Hormuz? Too bad we can't help people enough that they would not want to hurt us. But if need any where bombed or droned who ya gonna call?

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein