THE United States military is unarguably the most powerful and well-armed fighting force in the world. Yemen’s Houthis are generally described as a “faction” and on January 17 were classified by the US government as a “specially designated global terrorist” group.

Britain and the US are bombing alleged Houthi military installations in Yemen in an effort to deter the Houthi attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea. The Houthis have vowed to continue the maritime assaults until Israel ends its siege of Gaza. 

But the bombings and the terrorist classification have changed virtually nothing. President Biden even admitted two weeks ago that the air strikes have not served as a deterrent. 

“Are the air strikes in Yemen working?” a reporter asked. “When you say ‘are they working’, are they stopping the Houthis? No,” responded Biden. “Are they going to continue? Yes.”

Can anyone say “quagmire”?

As Basil Germond, Professor of International Security at Lancaster University wrote recently in The Conversation, “Politically motivated combatants are willing to engage in deadly combat and are not afraid of military or political escalation in the region.”

We have seen this before in lessons unlearned by the current US administration or any previous ones. The most obvious example is the US war against Vietnam, a country on which the US dropped more ordnance than the collective firepower unleashed by all sides during World War II. The US dismissed the Vietcong as pajama-clad peasants on bicycles; a “faction.” Guess who won? 

The price for the Vietnamese population was catastrophic — as many as three million people dead by war’s end according to some sources. The Americans suffered 58,000 fatalities. And yet, the North Vietnamese fighters persisted no matter the cost.

Similarly, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which killed at least 70,000 people, was considered nothing more than “a serious jolt” according to the diary at the time of army deputy chief of staff Kawabe Toroshiro. “We must fight on,” he wrote. His colleagues agreed. Japan did not surrender until the Soviet Union’s August 9 declaration of war.

After all, Japan had already endured far worse during conventional firebombing of its other cities and especially of Tokyo where at least 120,000 people were killed in a single US attack, more than the death toll from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

After two decades of war and the US withdrawal, Afghanistan is once again ruled by the Taliban. Iraq is riven with sectarian strife after the US-led war there resulted in the deaths of almost 5,000 US and allied troops and more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians, while costing US taxpayers $800 billion.

Yemen has already suffered an intense bombing campaign initiated in March 2015 by a Saudi Arabian-led coalition with logistical support from the US, which also accelerated weapons sales to the coalition. Then, as now, the target was the Iran-backed Houthis. 

The Saudi-led intervention, widely condemned, disintegrated into a stalemate. The Houthis, referred to then as “insurgents” or “rebels,” remain in control of large parts of Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa. The besieged country now has the highest rate of malnutrition of any nation in the world.

Shortly after the recent re-designation of the Houthis as terrorists (a category the US had lifted in 2021), the group fired a ballistic missile at a US destroyer that the Americans intercepted.

An Iran-linked militia in Iraq has also claimed responsibility for the January 28 drone attack on a US base in Jordan that killed three military personnel. The US has vowed to avenge the incident without offering specifics, raising fears of a wider war with Iran.

By the end of January, at least 66 members of the US House and Senate had called for a ceasefire or cessation of hostilities in Israel and occupied Palestine. 

One of the most consistent voices for peace is California Democrat Congresswoman Barbara Lee, a co-sponsor of the October House resolution “Calling for an immediate de-escalation and cease-fire in Israel and occupied Palestine.” 

Lee was also the lone vote in 2001 against then President George W Bush’s decision to go to war against Iraq.

“This is why I called for a ceasefire early,” said Lee. “This is why I voted against war in Iraq. Violence only begets more violence. We need a ceasefire now.”

Linda Pentz Gunter, a U.S-based writer, is the founder of the non-profit Beyond Nuclear —BeyondNuclear.org