Dave DeCamp from Antiwar.com reported in a recent piece that the Pentagon admitted in its annual report to having committed two large-scale massacres against civilians in Yemen. The Pentagon acknowledged that hundreds of civilians, including children were killed and injured in a series of strikes.
A public and open admission of war crimes. Another in an endless series.
There has been an ongoing war against Yemen over the past decade, the United States and it’s coalition of Gulf nations have imposed embargoes and inflicted attacks on the populace. An act of punishment against the Houthi (Ansar Allah) leaderhip, who replaced the pro-Saudi regime. The Houthi also fight Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and their affiliates. As is often with the case of US foreign policy, Al Qaeda and the United States are on the same side in their war against the Houthi’s and the people of Yemen. The Saudis and UAE at times co-operate and co-ordinate with Al Qaeda in the region, thus aligning the US with the terror organisation.
Meanwhile, the people of Yemen continue to suffer. Before the genocide in Gaza, it was the crisis and mass starvation and attacks on the Yemeni civilian population which was of dire concern for humanitarian organisations. The coalitions attacks on Yemen, included school busses full of children and other targets which were very unlikely to have anything to do with the Houthi’s or insurgent fighters. The policy of killing innocent people is one which terror organisations and their supposed government enemies-allies have in common.
The US Congress and people now know that they murdered more innocent civilians in a foreign policy campaign which most citizens likely have no knowledge about, or interest in. And still, the US government wages it’s war against Yemen, along with other African nations such as Somalia. Lost beneath the coverage of the war against Iran, the Russian-Ukraine war and Israels invasion of Palestine and Lebanon, the US has bombed Somalia over sixty times this year already.
Attacking Somalia has been a constant action from both the Trump and Biden regimes. Just as the war on Yemen has taken on little notice among the US public, their governments war on Somalia goes on in an open manner where apathy and entitled exceptionalism assumes the right of the US military to attack anyone it wishes. Civilian casualties are a price the American public is willing to pay, so long as their government decides to continue the wars.
Perhaps it’s apathy. Maybe, it’s a form of privileged fatigue for the Westerner among the doom scrolls, occasionally seeing a dead baby. Those in the attacked nations, die and cry. They suffer. The exceptionalism is immense, that the US or any Western power, or nation of power may do as it pleases with imperial interest, naked aggression or even domestic intrusion has become an accepted reality. Peace and liberty are forgotten values. To mention war crimes or even express discomfort over such things, is abnormal. Not even radical. It has become anti-social to even care about the victims of imperial government.
The US military has admitted to more war crimes. Now what? Who will do anything about it? Those who made the decisions, the killers who pulled the triggers, will they face justice or will it be another case of praise and raises. Promotions and celebrations. More dead babies, prove the weapons work. After all, it’s their babies. And, so long as they continue to suffer, and die. Those who survive may want revenge and will fight on. Thus, ensuring the forever wars go on. That’s the exceptional attitude.
They, them being those in the frontiers beyond Western civility and the accepted comforts of modern life, are seen as barbarians or savages. They are an existential threat. The public understands this, surely this must be a rationalisation. To kill them over there, murder a child in the crib, is an assurance that they will not kill a Westerner in the streets of a civilised city. The understanding of blowback and repercussions or what makes a terrorist, an insurgent never seemingly understood. The savagery of the savage is always understood. While the mass starvation and mass murdering from the civilised is an understood necessity. It’s not merely collateral, it has become a constant. To kill innocent people for no real reasons, is simply foreign policy.
The current US bombing campaign, Operation Rough Riider, as named by Secretary for War, Pete Hegseth, is a response to the Yemeni Houthi’s blockading and attacking Israeli-linked shipping. The Yemeni blockade of Israel is in response to Israel violating the January 2025 Gaza ceasefire. It is an act of defiance against the genocide against the Palestinians.
Many will look at the civilian death count and shrug, it’s a small number compared to… we have become so accustom to constant wars and the death toll mostly inflicted on foreign strangers that the numbers are blurs. Each nation, and the lists of their dead a forgotten back drop, Those numbers reflect real human beings. The tears and pain experienced by those who survived, are very real. The irony is that while preformative empathy and a mental health fixation has become a profitable trend inside Western nations, their seems to be a lack of empathy for the victims of their government.
They die.
The wars go on.
They die.
War crimes no longer need to be hidden. The Wikileaks revelations fifteen years ago would have no impact now. Who remembers those victims or whatever it was about. The execution of an aid worker, blown to pieces as he transported water for desperate people in Kabul, the punctuation of the US retreat from Afghanistan. The murder of Iranian school girls, or even the shooting down of a civil airliner full of Iranian civilians, four decades ago. The destruction of the MSF hospital, or a little place called My Lai. The massacre at Wounded Knee ended the Wild Wild West and the American-Indian wars. Another war crime. Just a name to be known by any who care, and unknown by those who don’t. War crimes without justice. Just war and it’s bloody inevitability.
What does it say when war crimes can be hung out to dry, in plain sight, innocent blood splashing in the sun. Too few care. And, if they do. What can they do? The mob, loves their government and their government loves war.
So, the wars go on.
And so too, will the war crimes.
