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Radio War Nerd EP #420 — Bomb Back Biden (Patreon)

Published:
2024-01-13 18:06:47
Edited:
2024-01-13 23:16:36
Imported:
2024-01
Tags:

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Content

Recorded: January 12, 2024

Emergency episode on Biden's bombing campaign against Houthi-controlled northern Yemen, a region subjected to US bombings and deadly blockades for most of the 21st-c.

Total time: 1:03:27

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

*

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Comments

Smalls

*Jan 12, 2024

J. A.

"Like anyone hasn't tried that before"

Lord-Admiral of the Pyrenees

Emergency Pod! The alarm bell goes off and Ames and Dolan slide down the fire pole and into the studio

Benjamin Glover

civil war diaries pt. 3? think again, fucker

Lojban Chauvinist

Prosperity Guardian, not "Garden." This kind of mistake lowers the credibility of the episode

Anatoly Kir

Belief systems and politics aside, the Houthis are hard motherfuckers.

8BitThunder

I love Mark and John, but I unfortunately agree - it makes you wonder how much they’ve been reading on the subject.

CR

NEVER QT. SCREENSHOTS.

Ellen Harold

This discussion of the Houthis reminded me of an anecdote I once read, I think, by the historian William H. McNeill, author of Plagues and Peoples and many other books. McNeill said he was once approached by some faction of the US military back in the 1940s or so for advice on how to subdue insurgencies among populations of mountainous peoples, and he answered that the only way would be to repatriate all of them en mass to lower ground. I looked up the topography of Northern Yemen, and it is indeed a mountainous area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Yemen#Elevation

CR

Biden has never done anything good or progressive in his life and never will. Mark giving him credit for not being more right wing than any previous president (remember, Obama was at the same point on the left-right spectrum as Reagan) is fucking delusional.

CR

Then next episode we begin a twelve-part saga from JD about having to go to an Italian ER for his pole-related injury.

CR

Oh, wait. Are you serious?

MoldyTolge

Ideology is not my cup of tea, but their development over the last decade is impressive. From fighting without shoes on to dictating the routes of international trade.

Lojban Chauvinist

One thing this episode could have used was more of a serious rebuttal of the "Iranian proxies" claim. It's right to be sceptical of that claim, but not to the point of ignoring the evidence. In 2017, the head of the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corp first admitted to playing an advisory role to the Houthis. In 2019, the Iranian Chief of Staff reiterated that Iran provided "advisory and intellectual support" to the Houthis. It seems universally accepted that Iran arms the Houthis. The mainstream view in need of a rebuttal is not, as Mark strawmanned, that the Houthis are mercenery puppets doing it all for the cash but that (echoing how this episode describes U.S. support for the KSA or Israel) local interests coincide with Iranian ones, resulting in the rebels becoming dependent on arms and intelligence from Iran and increased Iranian leverage over their military policy. Or, as the U.S. Institute for Peace (irony alert) put the matter yesterday, "It is believed that Iranian intelligence, technology and weapons have enabled the Houthis to conduct their attacks in the Red Sea." If this is true, it is not a stretch to say that the Houthis are Iranian proxies, let alone Iranian-backed (which is much harder to dispute). One of the things the War Nerd has been good at in the past is deflating such claims with careful analysis of all the evidence.

James

I think the rest of their coverage on the Yemen War, in addition to the analysis in this episode, suggests that they've read exceptionally widely on this conflict...

MoldyTolge

In the early days of War Nerd, Syria included, felt like the world made more sense. Back then we were simply Assadists for doubting that the Zenki Brigade were anything less than Liberal Democrats. And for the record War Nerd coverage of Syria holds up, especially the Gas episode.

Nicholas Levis

Sure it's not just mumbling? For co-host he usually says, "and I'm your ghost, Mark Ames."

Mark Ames

I said “garden”??

Daniel Kloke

Applauding discussion of mercenarism ~46:00.

Mark Ames

I do mumble too much, brendon has been giving me grief about it for years. I usually start off shows consciously *not* mumbling, then as time goes…

Mark Ames

On quoting Bill Casey’s US Institute for Peace, I recommend our series on Casey’s other concurrent project, The National Endowment for Democracy. As for the Houthis, we’ve covered them more in depth in several episodes on Yemen; on the question of “Iranian proxies” we did a great ep with Amal Saad on Hezbollah that went deep into that “proxy” relationship. I’m not surprised that the USIP boyz make the Houthis out to be Iranian proxies, by that definition Hamas are also Iranian proxies. Defining them as such serves the Pentagon’s agenda and illuminates nothing.

James

You do both run with the 'Garden' name a bit and talk about how it must be a nod to Market Garden in WW2, but I've been listening to you guys for a few years now an I'm not going to suddenly question all the great work you've both done because of a single goof; you've got hundreds of hours of excellent material on record, that speaks for itself. Operation Prosperity Guardian is a stupid name anyway!

Mark Ames

holy hell then it's even worse than that because my notes for the show are headered operation pr guardian in all caps, and I didn't notice "garden" during the editing. Biden brain, here i come!

Christopher Small

A little put off by how quick they were to dismiss the Houthi's relationship with Iran. They are a proxy in the same way Ukraine is a proxy for the US against the Russia or Azerbaijan is for Israel against Iran. That's not to say they're not independent actors with their own means and motives for doing things. But they are supported by Iran for various strategic ends. That's kind of an important thing to get about Iranian foreign policy, which is focused around making sure any fight happens well outside their borders with as little exposure to themselves as possible, namely by investing in things like drones/ballistics missiles and clients. To this end they've played their hand pretty well insofar as they've enabled an ally to considerably undermine their rivals while risking little themselves. And for the Houthi this means they probably do have some sophisticated weaponry that could hit naval vessels ands aircraft, or at least could get them with relatively little issue

James

Biden Brain happens to us all, man! Although it does seem to happen to Biden more than most...

Lojban Chauvinist

Thank you for your gracious replies, Mark. I appreciate it

J P 3

Should we refer to Israel as a "U.S.-backed proxy"? Were Great Britain and the Soviet Union "U.S.-backed proxies" in WWII, given the dependence on the U.S. for material and weapons supply and production? One critical difference is that Iran doesn't appear to provide weapons per se. What appears to be happening is that there is information sharing between groups comprising the "Axis of Resistance". e.g. rather than a profit-centered model of weapons procurement and distribution, these groups appear to be teaching each other how to produce these items locally. e.g. thinking also with respect to reports regarding Iranian Shaheed missiles provided to Russia. Initially there was a transfer of weapons, but ultimately, it appears that Iran has just aided Russia with domestic production of these systems. The same appears to be happening in these other cases. e.g. think it is highly unlikely that Iran or Hezbollah was transferring RPGs to Hamas. More likely they just gave them blueprints and training for how to produce these domestically. Think that may be the case with the Houthis and ballistic missiles. There is clearly a relationship and some coordination, but we assume that these groups lack the ability to act with a degree of autonomy (because that tends to be the way that U.S. relationship works with its proxies). Not sure that's the case here.

SB

Hats off to John and Mark for being a very rare voice back in 2015-2016 yelling about the atrocities in Yemen, the never changing figure of "10K dead", and the deafening silence from nearly everyone else who should have been covering the genocide. Garden vs. Guardians - who cares. They raised their voices and covered Yemen extensively when it really mattered.

J P 3

Ukraine is much more dependent on the U.S. and the west for weapons production, systems, and munitions, than is the case with these Iranian groups. We do the equivalent of giving people the printer or the razor, but if they want the toner or the replacement blade, you have to come back to us as your supplier. If you need repairs, you have to come to us for parts. For every system we produce, we let the private sector capture a percentage for its profit. That creates a very heavy degree of dependence -- and benefits our profit-centered military contracting model. The complexity of our systems is a feature of the for-profit model (and a bug as far as volume and cost per unit is concerned). I don't think is the case here. e.g. if you teach people how to build weapons, give them the blueprints, it means they can produce a lot more stuff, more cheaply than would otherwise be the case. It also means that once you've taught people how to independently build these things, you don't have the same degree of leverage over what they do with the technology.

J P 3

Very good episode. One thing I'd note though about Jamal Khashoggi is that the least important thing about him was that he was a "journalist". I may be overly cynical, but as far as I can recall Khashoggi's case is probably the only time in our history that a CIA director has publicly traveled to investigate a murder of a journalist. I would tend to put his case to the side. Of course our government should be making the murder of journalists in Gaza a much more high profile issue, but I'm not surprised that it isn't given the large gap between our nation's stated values, and the values that our political class and de facto state media demonstrate through their actions.

Patrick Link

Didn't the Houthis get all the gear from the Yemen Arab Republic Army in the 1990s?

Christopher Small

That doesn’t really negate the point. Yes, the Iranians tend to do things more through extensive, DIY warfare for various reasons (it’s more cost effective, there’s less exposure, they can do it through the IRGC rather than the Artesh, etc.), but that doesn’t mean they’re not doing it, or that it makes a big difference. Quite the contrary. I mean, part of the reason those Houthi’s have been so inventive is because they have advisors who can tell them things Hezbollah figured out through trial and error a decade ago.

John Pearson

Really appreciated this episode. Anyone have a link to the Houthi video mentioned in the episode? The english-narrated announcement about why Houthi attacks on shipping are happening. Googling and twitter searching not turning up anything.

Kallindril

Joe Biden’s first 6 months sucked too. He split his “agenda” into 2 bills, then passed the one that Mitch McConnell voted for, and watched the 2nd bill with anything good in it get slashed to 10% of what it was.

Joel

Regarding Blinken's role in original Yemen assault, he was actually the first U.S. official to go to Riyadh in the first weeks of the war to pledge full U.S. support and expedited arms shipments. During the Trump years he tried to cover himself by telling the New Yorker he had always privately believed the Saudi goals were unrealistic: "The Administration declined to directly join the campaign, but, soon after the war began, Tony Blinken, the Deputy Secretary of State, flew to Riyadh to meet with M.B.S. 'He told me his goal was to eradicate all Iranian influence in Yemen,' Blinken said. He was taken aback; to purge Iran’s sympathizers from the country would require a bloodbath. 'I told him, You could do many things to minimize or reduce Iranian influence. But eliminate it?'" https://archive.is/ccIof

8BitThunder

That occurred to me - When I started listening to RWN I thought “the ghost Mark Ames” was just his writing moniker…

8BitThunder

And apologies for suggesting that maybe you hadnt been keeping up with the discourse- it certainly doesnt discredit the rest of your work on the subject. For one thing “the discourse” is predictable as ever - I mean, its not like reading The Atlantic’s op-eds on the subject are going to broadcast some nuanced defense of the imperial project.

Jeff Normal

Well, they got an awful lot from the Saudis as well lol

Kael Fischer

Yes that was super annoying.

Kael Fischer

Surprising that Britain's colonial history in Yemen was not discussed or even mentioned. It seems like this is important context given UK rushing back in with it's tail wagging.

Ezra de Leon

I think I saw one posted recently by the Gary Brecher account on Facebook. It had a guy with a high-class British accent narrating, kind of sounded like a nature documentary.

William

I think the point is that the Houthi are a force to be reckoned with on their own - the “Iranian militants” line makes it seem like they’re just faceless stormtroopers acting on orders from their evil overlords in Tehran

jacob BL Baldwin

"Tell the King and his Imbecile Son!" also rips

William

It didn’t bother me at all and I didn’t/don’t care in the slightest

Doug Cartel

speaking of the failing PR war, Cradle just had an article about how the IDF was responsible for most of the deaths at that rave on Oct 7, so my hope is that that starts a trend of people talking about what really happened that day.

Jimmy B

420 blaze it

a clash of purple

I don't know how strongly the Iranians feel about supporting the Houthi cause, but the reality is that they can't really provide them with any kind of material supplies. The U.S. intercepted an Iranian shipment of arms to Yemen and it was basically just a few crates full of AK-47s. Hardly even worth mentioning.

a clash of purple

As the rightful internationally-recognized government of Estonia, I beseech the United States to stop bombing the Iranian-backed rebel militias of Yemen and start bombing the Iranian-backed rebel militias of Estonia. It's bad enough that the Resistance Axis stretches across the Middle East, aren't you worried about them gaining a foothold on the Baltic Sea? Iran already controls Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Latvia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Lithuania, and all other countries besides Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S.. The liberation of Estonia would mean adding one of the most powerful economies in Europe to NATO's warchest for its epochal struggle against Iran's global hegemony, with up to dozens of dollars and as many as three soldiers.

Ander Pierce

Excellent episode! From what I've seen bombing the Houthis is very popular in the USA, the general idea seems to be "they're pirates bombing commerce, so if we want to turn their country into a parking lot that's our prerogative". Given the deep level of strategic cooperation between Iran and the Houthis, alongside growing cooperation between Iran/China and Iran/Russia, I've had the nibbling sensation that Yemen is going to sprout advanced air defenses from its friends to the North. Pure speculation though.

Ander Pierce

Well it wouldn't be very good propaganda if it had context!

Yairo Martis

Operation International Markets Garden.

Yairo Martis

On they're flying out of bases in Cyprus!

Dan Leaf

Chapo trap house put it best …. “Operation Amazon prime”

xnfec

The first episode of Adam Curtis's The Mayfair Set has a bit about Britains attempts to thwart Nasser in Yemen. It is on youtube - or it was last time I looked.

Graham Isom

Is there any where to read what John wrote about Yemen? Like a back issue of the news letter?

dmitry myaskovsky

I think my subscription lapsed right when John's anti-travel book was sent out- how can I get that at this point? Or who should I contact? Thank you in advance!

Knicks Fan 1000

Hi War Nerds! I’ve been a listener for about 2 years now but just decided to make the jump and subscribe. Thank you guys for your incredible content!