The Forgotten Forever War That Cost Mike Waltz His Job

America has been bombing Yemen for two decades. That conflict ultimately led to Waltz’s dismissal as national security advisor.

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When Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic was accidentally added to a group chat in March with the leaders of the national security cabinet, the incompetence and sloppiness on display distracted from what the other participants in that chat were actually doing: Planning a bombing campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

It’s fitting that the purpose of the group chat was largely overlooked: Every president since George W. Bush has bombed Yemen as part of a forever war that has largely occurred in the shadows. Accidentally adding Goldberg to the group chat almost certainly contributed to Thursday’s announcement that Mike Waltz, who had served as President Trump’s national security advisor since January, would be leaving his post and shuffled to the United Nations. But strikes on Yemen will continue under a new national security advisor as well.

Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East, and most Americans probably don’t realize that under various pretenses—from the War on Terror to a Saudi-led war on the country to protecting shipping lanes in the Red Sea—the US has been attacking it for two decades. As Israel’s crackdown on Hamas in Gaza has expanded into a regional war and what human rights organizations have documented as a genocide, the Houthis have expressed support for Palestine by launching strikes on both Israel and on important maritime trade routes.

This week, in some of his final hours as national security adviser, Waltz doubled down on the value of war on Yemen that in the last month alone has killed 500 civilians. Writing in The National Interest to mark Trump’s 100 days in office, he described them as a success story. He commended the president’s “bold decision to launch strikes against the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen, who were constantly attacking American and international ships in the Red Sea” and argued “President Trump’s operations against the Houthis go hand-in-hand with a broader campaign of imposing maximum pressure on Iran.” On Wednesday, he boasted that the US had hit over a thousand targets in Yemen. Waltz could crow all he liked about the bombing campaign, but it wasn’t enough to save his job. On Thursday, Trump moved him out of the White House.

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Read more of Jonathan’s article in The New Republic

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