The US government was forced to flee yet another US facility overseas today, as the last of the US personnel at its embassy in Yemen were whisked out of country and the building was abandoned.
With the announcement last week that the rebel Houthi movement would form a government in Yemen, the country’s second coup in just four years was finalized. Then-President Hadi had been put into place with US blessing after an “Arab Spring” coup deposed previously pro-US dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2011. But last month it was Hadi’s turn to be overthrown. He had been a loyal partner and supporter of the US drone program in his country, which had racked up untold numbers of “collateral damage” kills in addition to killing members of al-Qaeda’s Yemen franchise.
In September, President Obama heralded the US drone program in Yemen as the “model” for future US counter-terrorism operations.
According to press reports, the Houthi rebels today seized all of the US military vehicles in the capital, Sanaa, and relieved the US Marine guards of their weapons before the Marines left the city. According to the reports, in the chaos of the US departure US military personnel even handed weapons over to random airport workers.
Embassy staff were reportedly up all night last night burning sensitive documents in anticipation of their evacuation from the country. One can only imagine the stories these documents would tell of yet another US intervention gone completely wrong.
It was just last July when another US “Arab Spring success story” came a cropper, and the US had to abandon its embassy in Libya’s capital Tripoli. Late last year it seemed likely that the US embassy in Baghdad would also have to be abandoned, but President Obama announced another war on Iraq to forestall that embarrassing event.
As US interventionists rub their hands in anticipation over the prospect of a US escalation in Ukraine, why is no one pointing out their steady stream of failures? Indeed, just as the rotten fruits of US intervention are stinking up the globe, the president has gone to Congress to request a blank check to use US troops anywhere, worldwide, for three years! The neocons blame these failures on insufficient interventionism — if only we had dropped 10,000 bombs instead of 5,000 all would have been well, etc. — but that is like blaming intoxication on an insufficient intake of alcohol. It is a perversion of cause and effect. Nevertheless, who do we continue to see on mainstream US media as the “experts”? Those who continue to be wrong and leave a smoldering graveyard of chaos in their policy wake.
