The United States has “boots on the ground” in Yemen, reports Military.com:
A small team of U.S. Special Forces troops is on the ground in the midst of Yemen’s civil war in support of an operation against the Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) terror group, the Pentagon said Friday.
The U.S. troops are limited to advisory and intelligence work, but they could be drawn into conflict in self-defense, said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman. “They certainly could be. Combat can always happen.”
The amphibious assault ship Bataan with several hundred Marines aboard is also operating in the region, but troops and aircraft from the ship are not involved in the current operation, Davis said.
Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen is and always has been illegal. Presumably, the pretext for U. S. involvement is the Authorization to Use Military Force. The actual reason is probably to prevent KSA’s incompetent military from falling on its face.
It’s really long past time we repealed the AUMF and replace it with some much more constrained legislation, authorizing the use of force in specific present conflicts and explicitly banning other uses of U. S. military force. A lot of the people we’re fighting under the auspices of the AUMF were grammar school age in 2001. The notion that we’re fighting the same fight now as then is a strain.
I agree with you completely about the AUMF.
There are two things going in Yemen however. There are the US operations against AQAP which predate the Houthi takeover of the western part of the country. Secondly is the civil war between the Houthi’s (backed by Iran) and the previous government under President Hadi (backed by the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia and some others)
Before the Houthi takeover in 2014, we worked with President Hadi’s government to fight AQAP. Hadi is his supporters are still around:
Yemen conflict: Who controls what
The US is actively fighting AQAP and continues to do so. The US is not directly involved in the government’s conflict with the Houthi’s but it does provide logistical and intelligence support to some of the combatants.
I think the Executive’s argument (through both Obama and Trump) is that the AQAP fight is covered by the AUMF while the logistical/intel support is covered by other legislation. Amendments to appropriations bills have actually come up to cut off support but they’ve all failed.
Once again Congress (or some in Congress), loudly express opposition to US involvement in Yemen, yet quietly continue to support and enable that involvement in appropriations.
To the best of my knowledge the publicly available evidence that the Houthi were supported by Iran prior to the Saudi invasion is weak. It seems to be based on the idea that all Shi’ites are in cahoots.
As to the rest support is fungible. In other words you’ve got to be careful that the distinction isn’t sophistry.
That’s correct, Iran only got really interested in the Houthis after they took over a big chunk of the country. Their interest is putting a thorn in the Saudis as well as helping nominal co-religionists.
Logistical support in this case is like Lend-Lease. We give them things, they use those things to do the fighting. Intelligence support is we give them information. They use that information to fight better.
That said, there is talk the Trump administration wants to expand the level of support. What that means in practice isn’t clear.
IMO our activities in Yemen have been an outrage. I believe that most of the “anti-terrorist” activities have actually been attacks against enemies of the regime. That’s very much what’s happened in Afghanistan as well. They say it’s against Al Qaeda. Our human intelligence in those places is pretty terrible. Basically, we just take the regime’s word for it.
Supporting the Saudis in their proxy war against Iran in Yemen has added insult to injury.