4um: Trump Orders Counterterrorism Expansion in Yemen (considering ground attacks)

Title: Trump Orders Counterterrorism Expansion in Yemen (considering ground attacks)
Source: Military.com/Tribune Washington Bureau
URL Source: http://www.military.com/daily-news/ ... terrorism-expansion-yemen.html
Published: Mar 5, 2017
Author: W.J. Hennigan
Post Date: 2017-03-05 18:02:27 by hondo68
Keywords: delegation of authority, defer to military commanders, Trump to insulate himself
Views: 204
Comments: 4

President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 24 in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

More than two years after a multi-sided civil war erupted in Yemen that allowed al-Qaida's local franchise to amass power and seize territory, President Donald Trump has told the Pentagon to conduct a complicated counter-terrorism campaign.

Trump's decision, just six weeks into his presidency, intends to reverse the largely unchecked expansion across southern Yemen of the group, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

The willingness to expand counter-terrorism operations inside war-torn Yemen is another signal that Trump is more willing to defer to military commanders on national security policy than was President Barack Obama, who was criticized publicly by three of his four Defense secretaries and privately by uniformed officers for micromanaging the military.

Over two days this past week, armed drones and warplanes conducted more than 30 airstrikes against suspected al-Qaida positions in three Yemeni provinces. They were the first U.S. attacks in the country since an ill-fated Navy SEAL raid in January that killed two dozen civilians, including women and children, al-Qaida militants and Navy SEAL William "Ryan" Owens.

The airstrikes are expected to continue into the coming week. Trump is also considering giving more power to U.S. military commanders to conduct operations in Yemen, including ground attacks.

The militant group is considered by intelligence officials to be al-Qaida's most dangerous affiliate because of its repeated attempts to attack American targets, including the bombing attempt aboard a U.S.-bound airliner over Detroit in 2009 and a failed attack on two cargo planes flying to Chicago in 2010. The group also claimed responsibility for the shooting that killed 12 people at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015.

No specific threats or plots were being tracked in Yemen, Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said Friday. Rather, he said, the latest strikes were designed to eliminate the Yemeni countryside as a place "where they can plot and execute external attacks."

The U.S. military did not specify why the operation kicked off this week. Targets inside Yemen, the Arab world's poorest nation, have been under surveillance for months.

U.S. intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the information on targeting al-Qaida in Yemen more aggressively was presented to the Obama administration in its last month in office, but was deferred to Trump.

Defense Secretary James N. Mattis and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented the strategy to Trump in his first week in office. The authority was granted to Gen. Joseph Votel, top U.S. commander in the Middle East, to carry out the Jan. 29 special operations raid and airstrikes on a list of targets.

The delegation of authority could be seen as a way for Trump to insulate himself from responsibility when operations go awry.

In an interview Thursday on Fox News, Trump was asked about the January raid on a remote compound in Yakla village that devolved into the fierce and deadly shootout.

"This was a mission that was started before I got here," Trump said. "This was something they wanted to do."

"They came to me, they explained what they wanted to do. The generals, who are very respected, my generals are the most respected that we've had in many decades, I believe," he said. "And they lost Ryan."

Later that day, Trump invited Owens' widow to his first address to Congress, and publicly praised the SEAL as a hero.

James J. Carafano, foreign policy and defense analyst for the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, who advised the Trump transition, criticized Obama for micromanaging military decisions but said presidents must be willing to accept accountability.

"You can delegate authority but not responsibility," he said. "In a sense, you put your personal reputation at risk. So if you delegate authority and then something goes wrong, because you hold the responsibility, the fault comes back on you."

White House press secretary Sean Spicer defended Trump's strategy, noting that Trump relies heavily on input from military leaders, while Obama was criticized for rejecting their proposals.

"He chose these highly qualified individuals because he believes in their expertise and understanding of the issues," Spicer said of Trump.

The Pentagon said military operations in Yemen are being coordinated with President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi's fragile government.

Yemen has been edging toward anarchy since late 2014, when Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim rebels known as Houthis swept in from their homeland in the country's northwest corner to seize the capital, Sanaa.

The Obama administration closed the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa months later and pulled out special operations forces gathering intelligence and launching drone strikes.

When Houthi rebels appeared on the verge of capturing Aden, the country's economic hub, Arab coalition forces, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, launched a counterattack in March 2015. By then, the rebels had forced Hadi into exile and controlled much of the country.

Saudi airstrikes, backed by U.S. intelligence and refueling, chiefly targeted the Houthis, not al-Qaida.

With a relative free hand to operate in Yemen, al-Qaida has flourished in the power vacuum, looting banks and raising millions of dollars by extorting companies, and imposing taxes and export duties.

In Yemen, where it is not uncommon to see billboards that read "USA kills Yemenis," some see U.S. intervention as likely only to make the situation worse.

"What is happening is really and unfortunately painting a dark picture of the coming period in Yemen, which would be protracted insecurity, instability for many years to come," said Muneer Talal, a TV director from the country's Taizz governorate.

(Times staff writer Michael A. Memoli in Washington and special correspondent Zaid al-Alayaa in Sana contributed to this report.)

Have we not learned anything from intervening in the Middle East? All that happens is we kill innocents and incite the locals to resist. ;)

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one." Edmund Burke

I was really hoping for better out of Trump. Getting involved in another country in the ME is not going to help "make America great again".

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." - Frederic Bastiat

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one." Edmund Burke

Puppet Regimes and Fake Democracy: Syria, Yemen, and America’s Quest for Imperial Dominance

By Eric Draitser

Global Research, May 25, 2012

At the G8 summit last week, President Obama and other officials in his administration, began utilizing the talking point of Yemen being a model to be emulated in Syria. Ostensibly, they were referring to the “peaceful” transition of power in Yemen as an example of what they would like to see in Syria. However, the comparison goes much deeper than simply this superficial connection. The truth is that Yemen represents, in more ways than one, the blueprint that the US imperialist ruling class would like to see applied to the escalating conflict in Syria.

Puppet Regimes and Faux Democracy

The “transition” of power in Yemen, from Saleh to Hadi, is a prime example of the hypocrisy of US policy, touting it as a victory for democracy while concealing the obvious fact that it was the creation of a puppet regime. Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has been presented as the legitimate leader of Yemen, despite the fact that he was the U.S. choice to govern that country. His legitimacy depended on the myth of a democratically elected regime; the US propagates this myth wantonly, pretending that people won’t remember that Hadi ran unopposed in February.

If the purpose of democracy is to create forms of governance accountable to the citizenry and to establish a government that is truly representative of the people’s desires, then it would be an outright lie to call the Hadi administration anything close to a democracy. In fact, as recent developments in Yemen have shown, his regime is nothing more than a puppet government, put in power by the United States in order to allow the CIA and other shadowy entities free reign to use drones, Special Forces, and other covert operations in what is supposedly a sovereign nation.

Not only is Hadi, the former vice President under Saleh, not democratically elected, he is the antithesis of progress in a country that was on the front lines of the Arab Spring. The people who marched through the streets of Sanaa and other cities across Yemen did so with the intention of effecting change in a country which, in the eyes of many, was seen as a backwards dictatorship. However, despite all the rhetoric about hope, change, and progress from the US State Department and the White House, President Obama and his minions, including John Brennan (counter-terrorism advisor and frequent representative of Obama in Yemen), immediately lent their support to Hadi. The betrayal came as no surprise to any informed observer as the United States was only interested in its own strategic interests in the region.

US Tactics and the Geopolitical Imperative in Yemen

US interest in Yemen is certainly not rooted in altruism or a desire to promote democratic ideals. On the contrary, it is the application of a long-standing geopolitical strategy to control international trade through the Mandab Strait and Suez Canal, access to African raw materials, and most specifically, block the expansion of Chinese economic influence in both the Middle East and Africa. For these reasons, the United States has a keen interest in both Yemen and Somalia, desperate to maintain chaos in those countries so as to prevent stable, nationalist leaders from emerging. In so doing, Washington once again shows itself to be an imperialist aggressor, interested only in maintaining and expanding the empire.

The tactics of this strategy are myriad. First and foremost, the US, in accordance with long-standing policy dating back to the Carter administration, uses the red herring of “Islamic extremism” and terrorism, to justify any actions it deems necessary for the advancement of its own agenda. In places like Afghanistan and Yemen, the enemy is Al-Qaeda which must be fought with US military might, while in Libya and Syria, Al-Qaeda is an ally fighting against the oppressive regimes of Gaddafi and Assad. This duplicity should come as no surprise since Washington’s foreign policy is based on expanding US hegemony rather than promoting any ideals.

The second aspect of America’s imperialist strategy is the fomenting of ethnic, tribal, and other sectarian conflicts. In doing so, Washington is able to prevent the emergence of any form of nationalism that, by definition, would stand in opposition to US imperialism. One must simply look across the Mandab Strait for an example of this strategy: Somalia. A nation of strategic and geographical importance, Somalia has been effectively destroyed by US policy over the last twenty years, having been transformed from a proud nation to a loose collection of tribal groups dominated by repugnant warlords with no regard for national identity.

In Yemen, we’ve seen this strategy employed vis-à-vis the Huthi rebellion, the propagandistic use of tribal groups as proxies of Saudi Arabia, Iran, or whomever the US wants to demonize, and countless other examples of these sorts of divisive tactics. In this way, the imperialists are able to keep Yemen fragmented, using it as a pawn on the geopolitical chessboard.

A Connection Between Yemen and Syria?

With all this talk about Yemen, the question might be, “So, what’s this got to do with Syria?” The answer to this question can be found in an analysis of the social movements of the two countries. In Syria, just as in Yemen, there is a real, pro-democracy opposition that took to the streets in hopes of forcing reforms. Both movements began with high-minded ideals and sought to end what they perceived to be the outdated rule of dictatorial leaders. However, unlike Yemen, Syria has been under assault by West-sponsored, foreign mercenary terrorists who have usurped the title of “opposition”, thereby making the real opposition into a mere irrelevancy on the international stage. The United States and its proxies in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, and elsewhere are responsible for this reprehensible turn of events.

And so, when the Obama administration claims that the Yemeni model is the best course of action in Syria, what they mean is that their tactics of subversion through terrorism are simply a means to an end. Just as in Yemen, the United States seeks to topple Assad and install a puppet government, one that would be comfortable under the thumb of the imperialist ruling class. The US has no interest in protecting the rights of the ethnic and religious minorities or the real opposition (namely the National Coordinating Committee and the Popular front) in Syria, just as they had little interest in furthering the democratic aspirations of the people of Yemen. Rather, Obama and those who control him, seek regime change in Syria in order to use that nation as a geopolitical chess piece against Iran, Russia and any other nation unfortunate enough to be deemed an “enemy” of the United States.